Almost Got It

  After service one Sunday morning, we told my daughter Maggie that she had been good during the lesson. Her brother Calvin not wanting to be left out said “I was good too.” His mother informed him however that he hadn’t been good, he had been noisy. That evening he wanted to rectify that problem. So during the lesson, he leaned over in a loud voice and said to her, “I’m not going to be noisy anymore.” It was, at least, a good attempt. 

  I think we all are like Calvin sometimes, trying to do right but still falling into old ways. It is like Paul said in Romans 7:19, ‘For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want.” Struggling to do good and not evil is not something we will never move beyond. In fact if we ever claim we are without sin we are fooling ourselves into sin. (See 1 John 1:5-10) We should never think that struggle means failure. Only when we give up and give ourselves over to sin do we fail.