Two signs, from a recent trip, read something like this:
1. Tacked on a tree by the side of the highway:
FINAL CHANCE!
The second impressed me as being a tad on the defensive side. But it reminded me, as Lent begins, that God never says to us, “I don’t like you either,” even when we are at our most hostile toward God and all that is good. Of course God doesn’t like our sins: God doesn’t like anything that hurts either us or others — which brings me back to the first sign:
Repent! Final chance!
Could this really be the last chance? I suppose it is conceivable that it could be, if we have so hardened ourselves to God’s loving mercy that we refuse it in a way that is total and irrevocable. But that would be our choice, not God’s.
God keeps reaching out to us and calling us back, over and over, tenderly, out of that love that is so deep and wide and all-encompassing that we cannot begin to understand it.
Repent?
Yes, indeed!
Now?
Yes! Not out of fear that it may be the last chance — because, rather, it is the way to blessed life, and any delay would be a pitiful waste of what is most valuable and most joy-bringing.
Here are signs that I can more easily imagine God tacking on a tree or sticking on the rear window of an angelic vehicle:
REJOICE!
- – - – - – - – - – - -
For I do not do the good I want,
but the evil I do not want is what I do.
Now if I do what I do not want,
it is no longer I that do it,
but sin that dwells within me.
So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right,
evil lies close at hand…..
Wretched person that I am!
Who will deliver me from this body of death?
Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! …
There is therefore now no condemnation
for those who are in Christ Jesus.(Romans 7:19-21, 24-25; 8:1)