My very earliest and most vivid and detailed memory was when I was just under 2 years old. I was walking already and toting my bottle wherever I went. I only spoke a few words, but understood everything my young mother said. This particular memory and experience was one of those in which my awareness to my surroundings was extremely heightened. It was so impacting to me for certain reasons ( both natural and Spiritual) that I can still to this day, see in my mind's eye, everything in the apartment, and where it was positioned. I can see the color of the couch and the old T.V. set with the giant knob that had to be turned by hand to change the channel. I remember that I was wearing a multi-colored striped shirt and a diaper only without pants. I remember my mother's typical 60's hairstyle and capri pants and her giggling with her friends on the phone which was in the kitchen. The scene begins with my mother calling me into the kitchen and telling me she is going to be on the phone for a few minutes. She tells me to not to go anywhere where she cannot see me which is basically in the living room that has a direct sight into the kitchen. She also sternly asks me to please not poop in my diaper since she had just changed it. Having been given that charge I immediately head off to the living room and begin playing with my loop stacking toy. Either coincidentally or just because I was told not to, I needed to go number 2 almost immediately. When the deed was done and I felt the guilt of doing something wrong, my first reaction ( at under 2 years old) was to hide the evidence and to cover it up. Since there were no fig leaves available, after I took off my diaper and hid it under the couch, I went and got a new diaper and tried to put it on.
I remember my mother coming over to me and smiling, almost laughing and asking me what happened to my diaper as she surveyed the scene of me standing there with a fresh diaper squeezed together between my legs, but hanging to the ground with no pin and poop all over my backside. I shrugged my shoulders as if it was a great mystery, but I am sure she found it eventually. She didn't punish me or scold me probably because she was so amused, and I realized that neither was I able to hide anything from her nor was I able to cover it up.
I received Grace from my mother even though I had made a mess and tried to cover it up. Grace is not a license to sin or a hiding away of sin or even a mere forgiveness of my sinfulness. Grace is not just a cover up, acting as if the incident didn't happen. Grace actually completely eradicates sinfulness itself. ( Rom. 6, Gal. 2:20) Grace, ignores my futile attempt to cover up my sin and wipes my butt clean, because I can't reach it. I wasn't designed to and neither God nor my mom expected me to change my own diaper. Grace is not a freedom to sin, its a freedom from sin. Even though I could not have verbalized or conceptualized it in my Toddler mind back then, I was exposed to a truth that God's Spirit highlights to me on a regular basis. I cannot eliminate sin in my life by my own effort. The adamic nature will always eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, (self righteousness) instead of the tree of life and then cover up with a fig leaf. The adamic nature will always try to hide the diaper under the couch and cover up the dirty butt with a new diaper, but the butt is still dirty.
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