Acceptance

It is very difficult to walk through life without sin.  Sin hides in the folds of the fabric of our life-scape, always waiting for an opportune time to snag the unprepared heart with an image or thought so out of sync, that we  stop a moment to wonder what it was that made us stop.  You work hard to purge out the most obvious sins, the easiest to spot, they are hard to deal with, but once dealt with they retreat from the field.  Some die. Others, ah! the others, they develop tiny hooks, small as a Brown Recluse spider, to inject you with poison in a moment of unguarded thought.

You see, no heart can be so utterly pure, and no mind so completely protected that the little barb, or dart of sin cannot pierce within and hide in the folded life-scape.  Then, when we pass by in that unprotected moment we are bitten.  How important that we must never have unprotected moments!  The mind is the entry of every evil deed.  We conceive of our sin first in the mind.  This is not a secret, or something new, everyone knows this, but you get to a point where you honestly think you are covering your bases only to discover that the Evil One always finds that uncovered base.

The key then is to remember that we should have known it would happen, because when you live your life with joyful resignation to the will of God, sometimes you slip up and the nepsis is relaxed.  We are told to "Rejoice in the Lord, Always!  Again, I say rejoice."  People who are rejoicing are sometime bitten by spiders, step on nettles, or get a burr in the fold of their garment. 

In my solitude I meet these little barbs of sin, and they torment me.  They say things like, 

"See, you can not hope to live a holy life because you are such a sinner."  
Then I say to them, "Depart from me all that is not of Christ.  You are a liar, the father of lies, and I will never, ever do what you say."
"But surely you must admit you are a sinner still."
"I do, " I say, "but I am not alone."
"Then where is your God?  I do not see him."
"Is that all you have, Evil One?  Questions?  I do not fear questions, faith is the knife that destroys your questions."