Walking drunkenly...

"Attack me, i do this myself, but attack me rather than the path i follow and which i point out to anyone who asks me where i think it lies. If i know the way home and am walking along it drunkenly, is it any less the right way because i am staggering from side to side? If it is not the right way, then show me another way; but if i stagger and lose the way, you must help me, you must keep me on the true path, just as i am ready to support you. Do not mislead me, do not be glad that i have got lost, do not shout out joyfully: "Look at him! He said he was going home, but there he is crawling into a bog!" No, do not gloat, but give me your help and support." - Leo Tolstoy

.....I think Tolstoy makes a very valid point here....  at the end of the day we are all just stumbling along, making mistakes... although it would be great if you could really look at Christians and see lives that truly reflect the nature of Jesus, if you really saw people who lived up to his commandments, at best what you see isn't that at all, but just people who consistently fail and sin and mess up, yet trust in the unconditionality of God's love and mercy and grace... I'm not saying that we shouldn't seek to be more like Jesus... i think we should... i'm simply saying that the fact that we fail and walk drunkenly doesn't make the One we seek to follow any less beautiful, or any less true. If anything, it just magnifies the fact that He is so amazingly gracious to bare with us when we are so utterly undeserving of it. However, i do still echo Tolstoy's cry and don't want to be content with walking drunkenly.... i would rather be led back on the right way when i stumble into a bog..... and i would rather help lead others back on the right way, when they stumble, and not judge. I know i owe a lot to those who have helped me, rather than judged me, when i've fallen.... and i am grateful for the glimpse of God's patient heart that this has given me.