For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his love for those who fear him;

¹² as far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

¹³ As a father has compassion on his children,
so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him;

¹⁴ for he knows how we are formed,
he remembers that we are dust.

I am so grateful.  The Lord is compassionate and slow to anger…unlike me.  Today I had a mini mamma fit while driving my daughter to a field trip.  Whoever designed the roads in the DFW area must have been stoned, devious, or just plain ignorant.  At any rate, I showed my daughter one section of Ft. Worth over and over and over again as I kept missing my turn!  We literally drove in circles until I figured out how to get over to the exit in the exact right time.

I said a bad word in the middle of one of my driving loop de loops.  My daughter thought it was funny.  But saying it didn’t make me feel any better — it just made me angrier at myself!

The sad part about all that is this: I have a navigation system in the car!  It’s a relatively new car, and I haven’t figured out all the bells and whistles.  Somehow the voice on the navigation was turned off.  I couldn’t figure out how to turn it back on and drive at the same time.  So. Now we know why my husband paid a little more to get me a navigation system.  Without it, I’d probably still be stuck at the 121/I-35W/Spur ??? interchange!

The day was a good one despite the driving malfunctions.  We visited a log cabin village that made me feel immensely grateful for modern conveniences.  Otherwise I’d be wearing clothes that were only washed once a month and living in a household of people who only bathed once a week.  We’d be eating food I cooked in a fireplace and drinking water from a nearby creek (yuck!).  When I got home, I embraced (figuratively speaking) electricity, air conditioning, refrigerators, microwaves, stoves, ceiling fans, bathtubs, and indoor plumbing.  The next time I feel like complaining about umpteen loads of laundry, I’ll pause and remember the way my ancestors who lived a mere 150 years ago had to do the household laundry.  No washing machine.  No detergent bought at the store.  Just homemade soap, water, and a scrub board.

The title to today’s blog contains part of one of my favorite verses, quoted at the top.  I have a habit of being tremendously hard on myself.  If I was a monk, I’d probably be carrying around one of those whips and slapping myself on the back every few minutes or so…

…but the Lord doesn’t remember my transgressions the way I do.  The East is as far away from the West as I can possibly imagine.  It is comforting to know that when I lose it, as I did today in the car with my dirty rotten mouth, and I confess that sin and ask for forgiveness, the Lord REMOVES it.  If it was a tangible thing, like a baseball, God in heaven would hold it in His mighty hand and fling it farther than the horizon.

What a precious gift we have in Jesus!

I end today’s blog with a song from Casting Crowns…about, of course, the East to the West.