God, Grace, and a Child

In the week that I have had, I've struggled with remembering to have grace with myself. It can be so hard to forgive yourself when you make mistakes and you've messed up yet again, and you can't believe you didn't learn from the last ten times you've made this mistake, and you can't believe your not a better person yet. Well, in struggling with this and in talking to God about it, trying to find a way to live with myself God gave me this picture of how our conversation looked.

God and a young girl are going for a walk, Now the girl is wearing a beautiful white dress, which she is very proud of and delighted in, in makes her feel special every time she see's that dress because it reminds her of God's love for her and his delight in her. "Look!" she thinks to herself, "Look how wonderful a Father I have! He bought me such a beautiful dress!" But as their walking the girl gets distracted by something in the distance, she lets go of God's hand, and very shortly after trips and falls flat on her face in the mud along the side of the path. Seeing her mistake she immediately starts weeping and reaches up to God to lift her up. God reaches down to His daughter, smiling and rejoicing in her trust in Him that she is the sort of daughter who loves and trusts her Father enough to cry out to Him when she falls. He lifts her up and brushes the mud off of her, his eyes full of love the whole time. But the little girl never stops crying.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry Father, I got mud on the beautiful dress you gave me. I'm so sorry, I should never have gotten distracted. I'm so sorry."

God looks at His daughter, the strong love never leaving his eyes, there is laughter in his eyes as well. "I don't know what your talking about, there is no mud on your dress."

"But I fell in the mud, my white dress is covered in mud." This whole time the little girl is crying so hard, and is so afraid to see her beautiful dress covered in mud that she hasn't even bothered to look and see how bad the damage is.

Her Father laughs, knowing that soon her tears will dry and she will see the truth. "What do you mean its covered in mud? Look see for yourself, it is just as white as when I first gave it to you."

"No Father, didn't you hear me? Didn't you see me? I fell in the mud! I'm covered in mud, I'm covered in dirt, my dress is dirty! didn't you see me?"

"Yes, I can see you, my beautiful child with a beautiful dress, look at yourself, not the image of what you think you must look like, trust me, look at yourself and you will see your dress is clean, and so are you."

The little girl looks down, and giggles through her tears. "But Father, how? I fell in the mud! How can it be that my dress is clean?"

"You dress is clean, and it always will be, not because you keep it clean, but because I have given it to you, it is a reflection of me. I will never fall in the mud, and because of that, the mud will never be able to stick to that dress."

The little girl looked up at her Father thoughtfully, then she smiled taking his hand again as they started walking. "I still don't like falling in the mud," She said, and hugged her Father's arm "But I'm glad the mud has no power over my dress." And with that she took off skipping, with her Father right beside her, hand in hand.