God's love is a healing love, and healing isn't always comfortable. It heals in a surgical sense, and the scalpel can hurt. It's more comfortable to avoid those times of authentic confrontation with God, which can rattle us so deeply.

Yet God is unwilling to leave us as we are, confused and mired in sin. To receive God's healing we must examine and admit our failings, the things we'd rather ignore or dismiss with "I just can't help it," or "God accepts me anyway." We must not just resolve to do better, we must actually do better. We must expect that there will always be new layers of unexpected sin under the old ones, and that we will never outgrow the identity "sinner." Yet there is peace, joy even, in admitting this truth. After all, Jesus came only to save sinners; the righteous, he said, can take care of themselves.

from Frederica Mathewes-Greene, "The Illumined Heart" (Paraclete Press 2001)