Nobody's Perfect

This was my newsletter article from the October Bethlehem Star, a few days late...oops.

An unintentional theme that came up in my preaching in September was that we are not perfect.  God did not make the world perfect; but the world was and is good, which means God is still in relationship with us.  Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob and Esau were not a perfect family – far from it – and we do not have perfect families, but we are part of God’s family.  Moses was not the perfect choice to go to Pharaoh and free the Israelites from Egypt, but God gave Moses the abilities that he needed to go to Pharaoh.  Likewise, we are not the perfect people to care for the poor, orphaned, widowed, sick, immigrant, refuge, homeless and hungry, but God will give us the abilities that we need in order to do God’s work and ministry in this world.

Often we expect ourselves and others to be perfect.  We get upset when our children do not get an A on a test or report card. We get frustrated when our order is messed up at the restaurant or coffee shop. We become irritated when we have to wait too long for a repair man or in line at a store.  We become annoyed at ourselves when our bodies do not function as well as they used to.

Isn’t it good to actually hear and know that we are not perfect? If we remember that we are not perfect we be gentler on ourselves and others when we fall short of perfection.  For, there are many reasons why we are not perfect. 

And those reasons we will hear about in October.  We will hear that the Israelites grumbled and complained in the wilderness. We too get so caught up in current discomforts that we grumble and complain, unable to see what God has done for us . God calls Samuel even though Samuel does not realize that it is God.  We too fail to hear God calling us.  God anointed David as king even though he was the youngest of Jesse’s sons and deemed so unworthy that he is left out in the field when Samuel was coming to their home.  Many others have deemed us unworthy and we sometimes buy into what others have said about us, thinking that we are not able to do good. Solomon builds a temple for God thinking he can contain God.  And we too think that we will find God only in church and fail to realize that God is everywhere. 

We are not a perfect people.  But we are a people claimed by God.  We have been given grace and forgiveness over and over when we fail to be perfect regardless of the reasons why we fail. Because no one is perfect, but we are children of God.