Who’s Sorry Now?

• How often do you say “I’m sorry”? How often do you mean it?

• How would you react if someone who’d hurt you asked for your forgiveness but didn’t seem sorry about hurting you?

While Ezra was praying and confessing, weeping and throwing himself down before the house of God, a large crowd of Israelites—men, women and children—gathered around him. They too wept bitterly.
Ezra 10:1

How many times a day do you hear someone say “Sorry” or “Oops”? Whether it’s a forgotten line in the school play, an accidental elbow to the ribs in the hallway or an attempt at humor that went bad, life is full of apology-inspiring situations.

How often are those apologies genuine? That’s hard to say. Sometimes the word sorry is nothing more than a reflex, a way of moving past a situation as quickly as possible. If someone says, “You hurt my feelings,” we say, “Oh, sorry,” and expect the matter to be dropped—without a second thought.

That’s not the attitude God wants from his people when we confess our sins. He wants us to see the damage we’ve done and feel the pain we’ve caused. He wants sin to bother us as much as it does him. More than anything else, though, he wants to relieve our pain and guilt by forgiving us.

PRAYER
Dear God, create in us a proper attitude toward our sin. When we disobey you, help us feel the kind of remorse Ezra and the Israelites felt. Amen.