Do you remember hearing about your "permanent record" in school?
Like, "Be careful, that's going on your permanent record." I'm not sure I ever really figured out what that was, but it always sounded very serious.
Apparently, if you're a pilot, you really do have something like that.
Recently I was walking through an airport terminal, and there were two pilots in front of me. One was an older gentleman, and the other was a younger woman. I got the impression she was new, because he was kind of explaining things to her about the company.
And he said, "Everything you do is recorded. Everything."
He told her that if she was flying a plane and arrived two minutes late, those two minutes would be there forever.
Two minutes seems so small, doesn't it? In the grand scheme of things, that hardly feels like a big deal.
But it made me think about how, spiritually, even the small things matter. A little white lie. A wrong thought toward someone. A moment of unkindness. Those may seem small to us, but sin is still sin.
Romans 3:23 says, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."
That means none of us are good enough on our own. We all have things on the record.
But here is the hope:
Colossians 2:13–14 says, "God made you alive with Christ, for he forgave all our sins. He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross."
I love that so much.
Jesus doesn't just overlook the record. He cancels it. He takes what was against us and nails it to the cross.