In the Balance by Susan L.

  Two different people talked to me yesterday about shades of gray. It brought a smile to my face. The Lord is ever faithful in affirming my ideas, my understandings of Him and His ways. I'd been second guessing yesterday's blog. For example, what if the blog had been implying something like saying, "I am a little bit pregnant." (I'm not, it's an example.) Either you are or you aren't! Black and white.
  Sin is black and white; it is or it isn't sin. I guess the shades of gray come in as God redeems the choices we've made: lost and found. Or as I have come to know, God is in all things good and bad. He is with us when we are everywhere and nowhere, up or down, inside or out.
  I imagine an old set of brass scales. Sin is in one of the hanging trays, forgiveness is in the other. I have to admit because I am merely human the sin side is nearly resting on the table, the grace is high in the air. But, if I don't ask to be forgiven nothing will change. That means knowing right from wrong.
  Wrong can be a slippery little devil, though. It can hide by wearing a 'right' mask.
  Is that why we struggle with addictions? Is that why we stay in abusive situations? Is that why there is such division in the church? How about racism? Indifference? Judgements and presumptions?
  There's the gray again. Until we are willing to embrace something better, wrong will often be our right. I know my own understanding of 'being wrong' has matured and changed over the last ten years.
  My own abusive experiences weren't all my fault after all. That insight was the moment the scale tray lifted off the table as the Lord took from the sin side and placed that heavy weight on the forgiveness side. For that I thank Him from the bottom of my heart. I pray He continues to work within me so that one day the sin side will be all but empty.
  "The crooked places shall be made straight and the rough places smooth; the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together." Is 40:4-5