Cancelled

"Jesus answered him,'Simon, I have something to tell you.' 'Tell me teacher,' he said. 'Two men owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred danarii, and the other owed him fifty. Neither had the money to pay him back, so he cancelled the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?' Simon replied, 'I suppose the one who had the bigger debt cancelled.' 'You have judged correctly,' Jesus said." Luke 7:40-43

I was dreading the day. An inescapable obligation, to which I had no desire to go, was getting closer and closer. I was literally feeling sick about it. All my emotions kept escalating. Frustration gave way to anger. "Clearly, this situation is completely ridiculous," I would tell anyone who would listen. Mercifully, I received a call telling me all was cancelled, done, over and out. Thankfulness flooded my soul. 

Jesus had an audience made up of self-righteous religious types, those who were sincerely seeking, and at least one who had been delivered from deep darkness by him. He told them all a story of cancelled debts to provide perspective. The religious types apparently didn't get it. The seekers soaked in the lesson. The delivered one wept with tears of joy. 

I hate to admit it, but sometimes I'm more thankful about something happening here on earth than I am about being declared "not guilty" in heaven. How sad is that! It's tragic to lose sight of the fact that, in Jesus, our sin debt to God has been cancelled. Let's commit together to never let another day go by where we don't fall at Jesus' feet and say, "Thank you!"

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