Lord, Help Us to Run to You. Saturday March 26. Lent 2011.

I work at the skating rink in Fountain Valley.

There are many interesting people there and they each have their own stories.

Every weekend that I work there, I come home with tons of stories.

Here is one of today’s stories that just reminded me so much of each of us:

There is a family that houses foster children and some of the children come and skate on the weekends. 

There were a couple of the brothers there this weekend and the youngest boy made a slight mistake. 

He pushed someone down.

He was scolded.

He became so sad and embarrassed that he took off skating, out of the rink.

One of the rink’s regular boys went out after this little boy and caught him right before the little boy made it out to the busy intersection.

The older boy had to literally drag the younger boy back into the rink where he waited for his parents.

It was pretty scary to watch this story unfold but once it was all over and everyone was safe, this story seemed so relatable to us and Christ.

We make mistakes so often.

We push people down, maybe physically but more likely emotionally or spiritually.

We fall down ourselves.

Sometimes the journey seems just too tough.

We all fail at being the Christians we are called to be.

We can be embarrassed or frightened by making that mistake.

We may feel like we need to run away or hide.

We feel like our mistake is too much to bear or

we feel like we can’t be forgiven.

And then there is Christ.

He is waiting there at the dangerous intersection.

He is just waiting to drag us back to safety to show us how much He truly does love us, regardless of the mistakes we have made.

His unfailing forgiveness is just overwhelming.

We should learn to focus more on His unending forgiveness rather than our seemingly unforgivable mistakes.

We should learn to run TO Him instead of running FROM Him.

He is there waiting for us.

His arms are open wide to us, regardless of our sins.

He has been so good to us in offering us the sacrament of confession to cleanse us of our sins.

We don’t have to run in fear anymore.

We can go right to confession and be free of our mistakes and submerge ourselves in His love.

I pray that next time we make a mistake; we may run right to confession and be freed of our mistake instead of running far away from the Lord who loves us so deeply.

Lord, please give us the courage to turn to You when we have made a mistake.