Regrets

I stood in front of the fireplace, a neatly folded piece of paper in my hand. It was a letter I wrote to my boyfriend Andrew my senior year of high school. What I had neatly penned in class was something I wished I had never had to write, and something that I hoped no one would ever read. To ensure this, I was going to burn it. If only throwing away this letter expressing my regret could do away with the memory forever, could change the fact that what I had to apologize for had happened. Just moments before I had found the letter on my dresser and read it, frowning at the contents. I wish that I could say what I had to say to Andrew nearly two years ago was not something that I still talk to him about today, that because of the regret I had then, that I have changed and have nothing to regret now. I wish. I wish that burning this evidence of my history would burn the history itself. But it doesn't. I opened the glass doors on the fireplace. I gently tossed the paper into the flames. It fell behind the grate of wood and was laying behind the fire, unharmed.I reached for the poker and stared into the fire.
My past, darkened by sins of all kinds, overshadowed by regrets, will not be burned. The choices I have made in the past 20 years of my life can not be undone, and the consequences are of the eternal sort. Granted, the stupid mistakes, the wrong pursuits, they have taught me many things, hard lessons. These lessons I don't regret, I just wish I had not been so hard headed, and that I could have learned without the pain. I stared anxiously into the fire. The paper had to burn. Being blackened by the smoke was not enough. It needed to be consumed, destroyed. Ashes. I opened the doors wider, preparing to shift the logs and stir the fire. Suddenly, flames leaped up, licking the back of the fireplace, consuming the neatly folded piece of paper. The orange glow of the flames satisfied me. I put down the poker.
I myself cannot undo what has been done. The fact is, what happened my senior year of high school can't be changed. It happened. What happened last summer can't be changed. I fear what other people think of me. I keep my sins to myself for fear of being judged, but how can I forget that the One great Judge is the One who was there watching when it happened. He knows my deepest darkest secrets. He sees all my sins. I worry about what other people think, what they would say if they read the note, if they knew all my sins... but I don't consider what the Omniscient, Omnipresent God of the universe knows and sees, and that is everything. I also tend to forget what He has done. The fire burns the paper, the paper acknowledging my regrets. The blood of Christ spilled out to cover them completely, and has left me white as snow. I can't change what I have done, but I have been forgiven. When God sees me, He doesn't see my regrets, my shames, my sin. He sees me through the blood of Christ.There is now no condemnation in Christ Jesus. Its only ashes.