Victory Woods...

                                A few centuries ago, when I was thirteen or fourteen years old, my brother and a friend of his took me with them into the woods, where they went daily to check their trap lines, at 5:00 am., each morning. This was long before I began drinking coffee religiously, so I stumbled thru the brambles and pickers with less grace than a bull in the proverbial china shop. To be honest, even with coffee and a full nights sleep, I more resemble that male bovines spacial ineptnesses than most ...

                                          But that is a completely different story.

                            Anyway, after my tripping in the mud a half dozen times or more, and sliding down a riverbank or two, we approached the first trap they had set. Happily it was empty, but my brother looked across the creek that we were standing by, and said" Look! There's a squirrel on a branch.... Do you see it?"

                                              Of course I lied. " Yep. I sure do".

                          ( picture this whole conversation in a Dukes of Hazzard twang. That's not how it actually sounded, but it's how it SHOULD have sounded. If you can't do that, then just use your best " Victory Mills drawl)

                                       He handed me his single shot  bolt action 22 rifle, and said  "Good. Shoot it".

     Unbeknownst to me, this poor little fellow had been shot a few dozen times already, and was tied to the limb by a string; they had found him dead on the ground, almost a month before, and put it on the branch, for target practice. Whenever it fell off, they tied it back up, and this particular morning, they decided to use him to see just how much of a crack shot I actually was.

                                                So I grabbed the rifle, the first one I'd ever held, and postured as only a thirteen year old, prepubescent male can, responding " No problem. I'll knock him right off that branch"

           That would not have sounded so ludicrous if I happened to be able to see the squirrel; it might have maybe even passed as believable, if I pointed at the correct tree...

                         So I fumbled with the rifle, and  fought with the safety, guessed as well as I could, and pulled the trigger...

                             I managed a perfect shot, right in the middle of the tree.

                      Sadly, it was a tree two trees away from the one that held the squirrel, tied to a branch...

                                " You got it !" My brother cheered, as his friend played along. We walked to the tree that held the squirrel and examined my supposed handiwork. There was dried blood and multiple holes thruout his body, none by the shot I took.

                      Not being able to see the squirrel in the first place, I decided that I probably didn't really hit the tree I was shooting at and, hit the real target squirrel by mistake...

                                                " Wow! I hit it GOOD!" I said...

                              So why did I drag you down Alice's rabbit hole, in Victory Woods?

                                           I had a point to begin with...

                                                                      Really, I did...

                                                Sin is such a stern and judgemental word.

                                    When I hear it, I act like a Pavlovian abused dog, hiding from that inevitable newspaper that is surely coming at my nose; instinctively I react,  Bad! Bad ! Bad!,  not just to the word sin, but also my place in it. I tend to internalize it, in guilt, almost as if it were my true identity...

                               Someone shared the most widely accepted and most accurate Biblical definition of sin with me years back, and again, recently it appeared in my studies.

                                                         To miss the mark...

                My life and my sins have been so much like that little squirrel fest I went on as a kid; not seeing what I was supposed to shoot at, faking it, denying what I did hit, and convincing myself that I did hit the right target all along...

                                 And all God really wanted to do was point my barrel at the right tree, the right limb, and maybe sight in my scope for me... He does not hate me for sinning, for missing. He wants to correct me and guide me, show me what I'm doing wrong and let me attempt again, until I improve enough that I hit that mark, exactly as He defined it...

                                                   There is so much Grace in that definition.

                         We all miss the mark every single day, more often than not, not having a single clue to where that last bullet went. We need each other so much, to notice when we are firing off range and ask us, hopefully gently and lovingly, can you REALLY see that squirrel???

                                                I fail at this, often; when I do try, more often than not, I completely miss the mark of giving Grace and kindness, while attacking with the question; and sometimes, I don't even try, I  just go down the middle of that old west street, six guns ablazin...

                                     I find myself so miserly in lending grace, and so comfortable holding a rolled up newspaper...

                                                      

                                         Then I remember that God loved us long before we sinned, long before He created us , and long before we needed correction. He loved us with the full knowledge we would miss His mark so terribly in The Garden...

                                            Perhaps that's meant as an example? 

                                                      I'm thinking so...