For some odd reason, I was reminded today of when I worked at a church back in the day and put together their bulletins. Apparently, some of the older members would get there early and grab a bulletin and comb it over looking for errors and mistakes.

Usually, I did good. Once though, I was supposed to put “in honor of” a certain beloved former pastor and I put “in memory of” instead. Oops. I can imagine him uttering the infamous line from Monty Python and the Holy Grail  “I’m not dead yet. . . . I feel happy!” (5 of you just got that last joke and the rest are thinking I’ve gone daft).

I think sometimes churchgoers are that way. They will comb your life and look for the least little mistakes to hold over you. A lot of us see God the same way, as the Supreme Micromanager, looking for what we’ve done wrong over the course of the past 24 hours to punish us.

I have very good news. God is not like that at all. I’m thinking of all the times I’ve screwed up in the last hour and that alone would probably fill up a couple of pages in God’s celestial diary.

No, when God looks at me, He sees what Jesus did for me and how He took all my mistakes, screw-ups, and sins and paid for them. God looks at me and sees Jesus’ perfection and is pleased.

The point is that none of us can look at anyone else’s mistakes with a judgmental heart because we only have to look in the mirror to see the guiltiest party. There’s a verse that says that if God counted our sins against us, who could stand? If God were as critical with us as we are with each other, no one would be alive.

So, just as God showed us mercy, we should probably show each other a little more mercy and grace. We should forgive because we always stand in need of forgiveness ourselves. And most of all, cut yourself a little slack. God knows you’re weak and stumbling and He loves you anyway. And if He can love you, why shoudn’t you?

For your added reading pleasure, here are a few of the more humorous bulletin bloopers. http://www.bible-reading.com/bulletin.html