Day 1: His Eyes

When I saw the pain in his eyes, I repented and prayed to change.

I was in my early teens and waiting at our local public school for my ride to the Christian school I attended in a nearby city. Several of us waited each morning and often our public school friends would come to visit us.

On this particular morning, one of my friends, a young man on whom I'd had a crush since I was 5, had come to visit. I had been peeved with him over a now unremembered offense and had given him the cold shoulder. When he came to me to ask what was wrong, I looked into his big, vivid blue eyes and I saw hurt, deep hurt. His eyes haunted me throughout that day.

That evening alone in my bedroom I realized that I had hurt more than this boy I admired. He was one of God's children and when I hurt one of God's children, I hurt God too.

God . . . my heavenly Father, the Creator of the universe, who had given me the right to call him Papa. Jesus who was beaten, mocked, and crucified because of my sin . . . my sin. I had hurt a brother in Christ, deliberately, out of my own pettiness. Christ had died for this sin . . . even this, what would seem to be, small sin in the grand scheme of sins.

Superimposed over the hurt in this boy's eyes, I saw the hurt in Jesus' eyes when I sin, when I do wrong, when I hurt another person.

My heart broke as I understood the depth of my sin and what my sin had done to the Jesus I love. I begged God to never allow me to hurt Him like that again. I walked in the knowledge of the weight of my sin (big or small) after that. I knew of God's forgiveness, although it would be years before I grasped the wonderful immensity of God's forgiveness, grace, and love toward me that could completely cover every one of my sins.