In the winter time, next to my bed, resides a pile of socks. It builds up and collects over a week's time.
You see, my feet are cold in the evenings, and I wear socks right up until I hop into bed, where I cannot stand wearing socks. They must come off. Socked feet in bed make me feel quite suffocated. But, until the bedtime moment, the socks stay on.
Then, I get my bare feet into bed, and they are still so cold. I put them on John's legs to warm them up, and because he is extremely gracious, he allows and even invites this. He likes for me to have warm appendices. He loves me.
Back to the sock pile.
I obviously can't put the socks into the dirty clothes in that moment, because it would require a trek across the cold, tiled bathroom to get to the laundry basket. So, there they lay. In a heap.
In the morning, I hop out of bed, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and make my bed right away. Okay, only part of that statement is true. Usually I am much more bleary-eyed, but I do always make my bed. I like having a tangible accomplishment immediately in the day, and it makes my room feel picked up. To complete the making of the bed, I go over to John's side, and just like that, I have abandoned the sock pile. Not be be thought of again until the next night, when I add socks to it once more.
John laughs at this most nights. He is such a clean freak that something like a personal sock pile would drive him crazy. In fact, my sock pile would drive him crazy if it were anywhere that he saw it regularly. But it isn't. We rarely go over to that side of the room during the day. Last night he was saying, "Have you blogged about the sock pile? You need to blog about the sock pile. I am sure there is a metaphor buried not too deeply under the surface. You could call it all kinds of things. Like 'Heap of Sin.'"
Well, thanks, honey. Comparing my ever-growing, never-addressed sock pile to a heap of sin in my life is extremely helpful. However, there are so many similarities. Funny how that works.
I've been reading Leviticus lately. (I know you hear that all the time.) Leviticus goes into great detail over sacrifices for sin, burnt offerings, and being clean or unclean. Leviticus is all about the law. And since I serve the same, never-changing God that is speaking in Leviticus, I have to ask myself - "Though I know the law has been abolished, what can I learn about God's heart and character through this book?"
Several things have stood out. God cares about the little details. He outlines various behaviors that are quite specific and entail things that it would be easy to think he doesn't care about. But he does care about the details of our lives, and more importantly, he cares about how our hearts are in engaged in those details. Also, God is serious about sin. It is a big deal to him, and he requires atonement and repentance to make things right.
As I read through the directions for sin offerings, I kept seeing the statement "He shall lay his hand on the head of the bull and slay the bull before the Lord" (Leviticus 4:4b). Then, there is a lot of blood splashing around the altar. What a gory and gruesome image. How would I think about my sin differently if to atone for it, I had to take an animal and lay my hands on its head while it was slaughtered?
Because Jesus paid the ultimate price of atonement for us, I get to repent in my heart and ask for forgiveness. The perfect lamb was slain on my behalf over 2000 years ago. It was gory and gruesome. But, I often gloss over it. I don't think about the bloodshed and the sin of all mankind resting on the shoulders of the perfect man who was God incarnate. My sin.
And so I ask God to help me realize my own depravity a little more and my need for him a lot more. I don't want to walk by the heap of sin in my heart like I do the pile of socks next to my bed. I also don't want to wait to the last minute to repent - I want a clean slate with the Lord.