ticketandunfailinglove

Return to the Lord your God, for he is merciful and compassionate, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. He is eager to relent and not punish.
-Joel 2:13

I remember my first ticket (and last, thank you Lord). It was a week before my 17th birthday, and I completely deserved the ticket. But this isn’t why I remember my first ticket. I remember it because of my parent’s reaction.

Now, my parents had always told me that a car is a responsibility, and one that can be taken away as easily as breathing. They made their rules on driving very clear, and that included no tickets and no accidents. So when I called my mom after getting pulled over, I fully expected them to park my car at the front of the neighborhood with a FOR SALE sign, and that would be the end of it. My first actual car would have been gone after only having it 5 months. I would have been okay with it because it wasn’t a surprise. The rules were there, and I had so obviously broken them.

But they didn’t do what I expected. I expected yelling, crying (on my part, and maybe my mom’s) and lots of decisions. But it didn’t happen. They sat me down and told me I would have to do the driving class to get the points removed and get all the paperwork together to go pay the ticket, but my car would stay my car. They said that I had learned to never do this again, and that was good enough for them. And to this day, I remember this moment, this mercy, this ticket.

And in that little bit of history, I saw God. A God that would do the same thing. We expect heat and anger, and we don’t get it. We instead get a God who looks at us with unfailing love. A love that won’t park our car on the side of the road with a FOR SALE sign. We can find comfort in the fact that no matter what happens in the world, we will have a God who never looks at us differently depending on what we do wrong. And that’s a very good feeling.

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February 23, 2015