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I have always been aware that I am pretty good at making mistakes and blunders. At times it seems that I experience more than my fair share of such incidents. Not sinful or unlawful acts, but simple mistakes that could have been avoided if I had been paying more attention. I could blame them on someone else or on the aging process, but after playing the blame-game I must take personal responsibility for them.

Some of the blunders that we make cause us to hope nobody is looking to see what a foolish mistake we made. Those events seem to burn permanently into our memories. Several years ago I had one of my slip ups that, even though it was quite awhile ago, it still stands out in my mind. It was a Sunday on which lunch was going to be served at church so I volunteered for a task that did not require a lot of effort: I was to bring a bag of ice. I stopped by the ice machine to make my purchase, and just as I deposited my money and selected one of the two choices—bulk or bagged—a gentleman came up and asked to use my phone to call home. I had never met him before and I was making a careful assessment of the situation as the ice machine roared away fulfilling my request for ice. Immediately after I pressed the selection button on the ice machine I realized I had selected bulk ice. I have bought it that way in the past, except in the past I always had a cooler for the ice to drop into; I didn’t have one that time! I had mistakenly pressed the wrong button and all I could do was pull the lever and watch as my purchase splattered on the ground to melt into the asphalt!

That was a mistake that I can only blame me for. It hurt my pocket a little but if bruised my pride more. Thankfully I was able to scrape up more money for a bag of ice and then continue on my way—perhaps a little more humble than I was five minutes prior.

God sees us at our best and worst moments, and even though we fail miserably at times He never ceases to love us. That does not mean He approves of everything we do—He does not, and there are severe consequences to sin that is left unrepented of–but he loves us enough, even in our most severe mistakes and sins, to take great effort to urge us to get where we need to be in our relationship with Him.

We are reminded of God’s great love in 1 John 3:1: “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know Him” (New International Version). We can be grateful that God loves every one of us despite our many imperfections. In fact, Romans 5:8 includes another picture of how powerful and undeserved God’s love for us is even though we have deep spiritual scars: “But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” He knows us, but He loves us anyway!

When you make mistakes don’t be too hard on yourself. Always remember that you are only human, but also remember that God loves you no matter what. When you sin against God rest assured that God loves you enough to forgive you when you sincerely ask Him to. You cannot hide from your mistakes or your sins, but you can rejoice that even though God knows you and all about you, He still loves you.