I was thinking about Jack Sprat and his wife this morning during my quiet time.
You know them: he could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean, and so between the two of them they licked the platter clean. I was thinking their sin patterns differed.
One–maybe it was Jack–was probably a ‘sins of commission’ type, who lost his temper and lied and talked unkindly about others. Maybe he even lusted after other women or coveted his neighbor’s ox. He was a commandment breaker, the kind of sinner you could spot at a distance.
The other–maybe the wife–was more of a ‘sins of omission’ person. She obeyed traffic laws but tended to drive wounded Samaritans as she thought about the upcoming President’s Day sales.
She neglected to correct Jack when he gossiped, and played mindless computer games when she could have made soup for her sick neighbor, and whenever she wasn’t sure what to say to the grieving widow, she said nothing. Definitely a James 4:17 type.
So the reason I was thinking about the Sprats is because I noticed that when I sit down to confess my sins, it is easier to recall what I did (“I snarled at my husband, Lord”) than to notice what I failed to do (“I haven’t served the poor in any substantive way lately”).
Regardless of whether my actual faults tend to be sins of commission or sins of omission, my confessions are definitely skewed toward the former. And that’s not right. A good confession requires thinking about what God wants me to do (but I haven’t done) as well as what He doesn’t want me to do (that I have).
Trying to remember at the end of the day the things I didn’t even notice in the middle of it is probably impossible. So here’s what I’m doing to change that.
At the start of the day I’ve decided to pray, “Lord, open my eyes this day to every opportunity You give me to serve You. And give my conscience a whack when I ignore what I see, so I get better at noticing Your will for me.”
