there again

I feel like there is weight on my back...pushing me down so I am faced with my sin and stuck in a patterns of stumbling and falling and wiping the muck off my face. I think Dante had this part down......in Purgatory people are working off their sin and continuously faced with their sinful rebellion and the reminder of their fallen souls. As they make their way up the mountain to God and Paradise the weight on their shoulder gets lighter and lighter until they can finally stand up straight and see God face to face. So I understand the illustration that Dante makes, but I don't agree with it....Oh I agree that you can feel like that...in fact I feel like that most days lately, but the truth is we do not need to work off our sin before the weight is taken from our shoulders. Your Word Lord say that Christ paid the price we could not pay. He has already taken the burden onto his own shoulders. He bore the weight of the Cross and that is enough. What is there we can do that Christ has not already done? What cost is greater then the death and resurrection of the Son of God?....yet we often try to pay penance for our sins...I often try to pay. There is a lie that the devil propagates stating that we earn our salvation.....we are the ones that sin and therefore we should be the ones to pay the price. It makes sense. But the truth of God is foolishness to the world. His grace is sufficient even for the likes of me.....if salvation is about earning my way into heaven, working off my sin to become right with the Father, to have a relationship with Christ, then two major problems occur. One: the weight of salvation is on my shoulders...that is a lot of pressure and frankly a lost battle. And two: that makes me like God...I have all the power.....but actually...there is a third problem that trumps the first two...what does that say about the cross? If the way to salvation is determined by my actions then why did Jesus die? Was His sacrifice insufficient to rectify my relationship with God? May it never be! Again, His grace is sufficient!

So what the heck is my problem? I know this truth...I know I do not "earn" a right relationship with God.....it is not what I do, but what He has done....the old has passed away and I am a new creation in Christ....I've traded my rages for His righteousness...yet when I stumble and when I fall...which is often.....instead of embracing this fundamental truth, I beat myself up, I take the weight of sin which Christ has already bore, strap it to my back, and try to make my way up the mountain, continuously dwelling in my indiscretions and forgetting the grace of our Lord. It sounds stupid to say out loud...to look truth in the face and say it's not good enough for me. Yet my actions speak louder then this truth I know in my head. I need to live this truth daily. So again I ask, Lord give me grace, grace to see you, grace to understand you, grace to let go of my sin, and grace to jump headfirst into you truth....to be hidden in Christ and found in Him alone. Amen