Our Box of Repentances
, preparing our hearts for Easter… the product of a clever note from a reader in Wales, all abloom in daffodils, that wound its way to these Canadian fields, still in deep winter cold….
(Truly, this is a community of the most sagacious, talented, God-followers. That you would let me walk with you, a companion on the Way… Humbling Grace. I like you all so much — and that you’d take me too? Staggering Grace! Always a privilege and real joy to learn from your wise notes… )
:::
Dear Ann (imagine the lovely Wales accent!)
Thank you for the idea of the journal last week; it really inspired us and has led to an idea we are taking on for Lent.
We are recycling an old cereal box and decorating it to make a “sorry box” where we will write or draw things we want to say sorry for. (It is sealed so no one can read what is in it. So the confession is secret if that is what the person prefers).
We will keep adding to it and decorating it till Easter when we will throw it away to symbolize Jesus casting away our sins as far as the East is from the West.
Thank you for the inspiration – I am looking forward to starting a thanks journal too!
In Him,
Sophie (Wales)
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The idea that migrated from a heart in Wales has settled here as a wooden box with a lid, a pen and a stack of paper (recycled business cards). As the day rolls out, and snags here and there, we find ourselves, Mama and Dad, big kids and little, taking a moment to confess our sins on small cards, slipping them into our box of repentances. In this practice we are experiencing it afresh: Confessing sins is a cleansing, emancipating grace.
Come Easter morning, Sophie and family in Wales, and us in Canada (and you too?), we’ll burn up our cards of sins confessed. Because they are, astoundingly, no more, because of Christ who did it all.
And we’ll walk home with an empty box of repentance, giving thanks that He has written our names, not our sins, in
His book of remembrance.
“I, even I, am the one who wipes out your transgressions for My own sake,
And I will not remember your sins.”
Photo: an old wooden cheese box with lid, the kindest gift from oldest son to his old mama — who he astutely knows does so like old things…
