Swimming on the Blackmail End of the Gene Pool

My mom and my sister Gina came to visit a couple of weeks ago. What a hoot! Let me tell you, you get three women of this gene pool together and we're finishing each other's sentences left and right--whether the other person wants you to finish her sentences or not!

These are women who know me to the bone. Every quirk, every weakness, every stupid stunt I've ever pulled. Not that I have any quirks, weaknesses or past stupid stunts, mind you.

Okay, okay. I'll just go ahead and admit it. Mom and Gina have plenty of potential blackmail material. If you ever see either one of them driving a spanking new car with all the bells and whistles, and if you happen to hear them refer to it as the "Rhonda-quirk-mobile," you can know I'll be making the payments on the thing. No doubt at any moment I could be dog-paddling on the blackmail side of this gene pool!

But do you know what's wonderfully glorious? Mom and Gina have all the dirt on me, yet they've honestly never used it against me. I'm car payment free, as it were. Even more glorious, they still like me!

How like Jesus that is! He had all the dirt on me. That dirt was mine. Yet he chose to clean me up and make me free--all out of his love for me. John 3:16 and 18 in The Message says, "This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life....Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted."

Acquitted! Not only did he pay my blackmail tab, he made me new--made it just like I never even had quirks, weaknesses, stupid stunts and everything so much worse. Ephesians 1:7 tells me just what happened to it all: "Because of the sacrifice of the Messiah, his blood poured out on the altar of the Cross, we're a free people--free of penalties and punishments chalked up by all our misdeeds. And not just barely free, either. Abundantly free!" (MSG).

It's a miraculous thing to be so abundantly free.

I'm feeling especially blessed today. I'm eternally free. And to top it all off, I was so blessed to get to have such a way-fun visit with Mom and Gina--a way-fun visit that was entirely blackmail-free.

Of course, wouldn't it just blow my whole analogy to pieces if I found out that the only reason I'm not making blackmail car payments to my mom or my sister is that I've got just as much dirt on them? I don't think I'll ponder that one. I'll just sit here and feel blessed instead.