Your Scarlet Letter

A few years back I read the book The Scarlet Letter for high school English. I remember reading it and having a little bit of a revelation.

I spend a lot of my blogs and writings talking about young people saving themselves for marriage. It is something that I am so passionate about, especially now that I'm married and I really see the blessings in waiting.

When I read that old, classic book I found myself stuck thinking about the heavy sin the woman had committed... her and the Minister both. In that day and age it was a great, a very great and grave sin to have a child out of wedlock. A woman (and the man in some cases) would even be put to death for such a sin.

In our time and generation there is no surprise if a girl has a baby without being married. Often parents and grandparents just brush off the fact that sin occurred. A man at a church my husband and I visited a while back asked if we had children. We said, "We have only been married two months." He said, "So do you have kids?" Marriage in no way seemed to need to come before having babies. It took me back. The way we brush over sin is incredible. It does seem especially lonely to have walked the path of purity so alone. Though it was very worth it.

Understand that in saying this, every life is precious, no matter where or how they were conceived. Yet, it does not change the fact that God had a better plan if the mother and father had only done things the right way. But God made the child and the baby has every right to live.

To switch gears.... Almost everything I have said in the last few paragraphs are what I have said many times over. Where things change is when I think about the scarlet letter on Hester's chest. It was a proclamation of sin.

That is when it hit me.

What makes that sin any worse than any other sin?

Nothing. All sin is wretchedly disgusting to the Holy Almighty God. The truth is that we all deserved a letter or word stitched to our chests.

Arrogant. 

Stubborn. 

Liar. 

Selfish. 

Faithless. 

Can you imagine that? Walking around with a word that's true about you stretched across your chest or even on your forehead? Every secret and dirty intent that your heart's ever had, written on you.

We deserve the humiliation. But what happened? The Son of the Almighty God hung on a cross. He knew every nasty truth about you and me yet He was stripped to nothing... naked nothingness. He bore it all so you and I don't have to.

No sin is greater than another. Stubborn pride is as great a sin as murder and adultery. They just carry different consequences in the world we live in.

If you are one who has read my blogs and stories and believe that because you never waited for your husband or wife the way that is right, then please listen. You are not permanently tainted. Don't wallow in it. You are free to move on in Jesus. You are free to do better.

What is your scarlet letter? What is mine? We all have many and all are of equal dirty blemish to a perfect God. Take them off and give them to the Forgiver. Then... turn from them.

And don't look back.