“Boys, are you sure you know nothing about him? I can’t seem to shake his loss. He’s on my mind all the time.”
It wasn’t the first time the father had said this.
“Dad, how many times do we have to tell you? You saw his bloodstained coat. Wasn’t it obvious to you that something terrible happened to him? We will never know what kind of an animal attacked him but dad, you are just going to have to cherish your memories of him and move on.”
Beneath the expression of pain on their dad’s countenance, do you think the sons could see the one word d-o-u-b-t (in Helvetica Bold font) inked on the white of not one but two, of their old father’s eyeballs?
Of all the companions one may have in life, Guilt, the old hound dog will prove to be the most predictable and reliable. Always there for you just like legendary ‘Old-Faithful. Always at your side, Guilt will never stray from you. Just when you think the old hound dog has become docile and sleepy, it lifts its head, and its ears perk up – always on alert.
Or to use another illustration – Guilt is like a foot being buried in the sand. As friends pile mounds of sand on your foot at the beach, just a few wiggles of the toe and the grains of sand slide and your foot begins to expose itself again. An endless task of cover-up and piling sand on top.
Keeping sin covered is one of the darkest and heaviest undertakings of life. At no point can you let your shoulders sag in rest and breathe a sigh of relief that finally it’s covered deep enough to haunt and taunt you no more.
Weeks turn into months and months into years. Twenty-two years pass by and now the brothers stand before a Joseph they did not recognize. Only a few questions by the Egyptian Prime Minister were needed. The men’s hearts begin to pound and ‘GUILTY’ is the word that screams through the long corridors of their minds and echoes in the hollow chambers of their hearts. So heavy did their hearts pound with guilt over their collective sin, they said this to each other:
In truth we are guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the distress of his soul, when he begged us and we did not listen. That is why this distress has come upon us. Genesis 42:21
Would it be an exaggeration to suggest that Guilt, the old hound-dog growled or barked at least once every one of the 8000 days over those 20 plus years?
If I am thinking I can bury my sin and break free of my guilt and fly to new heights as a believer, I’m sadly mistaken. If I think time will eventually cause such a distance between me and the incident that the handcuffs of guilt will release their grip and I will feel inner peace and integrity again, I am wrong. Until sin is properly confronted and confessed to God and to someone I have wronged or others who need to know, I will always feel the heaviness and the hollowness within.
There may be someone reading this today and you have confessed your sin to God, but you know things are still not right. You are still haunted and hounded by the sin – dogging every footstep. Just when you think you are breaking through and turning a corner, Guilt nips at your heels once again. Perhaps you know you need to speak to a Godly overseer where you fellowship.
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If the Lord is speaking to your heart right now, you need to know that the guilt of unconfessed sin will never go away. It gets carried to the grave along with its debilitating effects. God is the God who ‘delights’ to forgive and to restore.
The options are short-term pain for long-term gain or long-term pain for short-term — so-called gain. Today, get alone with God and embrace Psalm 51 as your prayer of confession and desire for restoration; and if you need to talk to someone else, do it. Your life is passing by.
Walk carefully and closely with the Lord today.
Warmly in Christ,
Peter Ramsay
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