Much Sinned-Against and Sinful

Over at Conversion Diary, the incredibly busy-but-still-lovely Jen Fulwiler has begun an interesting project, asking various writers to take a word from The Lord’s Prayer and share some informal musings on that word.

For instance, the great Heather King got “we forgive”:

When we stop counting the cost, the universe stops counting the cost toward us. When our hearts overflow toward others, the heart of Christ overflows toward us. The very letting go of our calculating and scheming and fear—not winning; not acting as judge, jury, and executioner—turns out to be what we’ve wanted all along.

My lesser effort, was on the whole “Trespass” thing:

Looking back over our lives. most of us recall moments that make us wince — memories we’d rather keep buried are often bound up in those moments when we have been trespassed against. In fact, the times we have been sinned against are seared so deeply within us that they don’t even require an access of memory to bring them forth; we wear them in our flesh or display them in our guardedness or our sarcasms, or our protective narcissism.

If what is well-fortified within us can rarely be breached, it follows that a trespassing is an invasion at our most insecure and vulnerable point. And because those vulnerabilities are not always obvious, others may not even know the depths to which they have trespassed against us. A tossed-off, jeering remark that may bounce off of one friend might wholly undo another.

You can read the rest of this piece (and the rest of the thoughts, so far) at this link.