Zip Your Pants Up, Preacher!

There is an old Disney movie called "The North Avenue Irregulars". It's a 1979 silly slapstick comedy with Karen Valentine, Cloris Leachman, Ruth Buzzi. In the plot (word used loosely here) a new preacher moves to town. In one scene he notices during the service that his zipper is down. In a moment of brilliance he calls for prayer and then while bowing and praying he zips up his pants. Of course when he stands back up his tie is caught in his zipper and "hilarity" ensues. I think I really liked this movie because of the people I watched it with ... You know ... We would have laughed at Ryan O'Neal weeping for Ali McGraw in Love Story ("Love means never having to say you're sorry." bahahahahaha). The laughter was more because of the company than the movie. Anyhoo...I think I'm dating myself here with these old movies. Back to zippers and preachers. Giant fear here. I even had a dream recently that I was standing in front of the church (and not even behind the pulpit) with zipper down and one of our young members coming up and standing in front of me to tell me my zipper was down. I'm turning red just thinking about it! I know there are more important things going on in the world but I do have an observation. Re-reading my last post, I was really tempted to delete it from the record. I felt like I was standing before you with my zipper down. That is to say, that I am a bit embarrassed by my petty rant. But I know a lot of people have already read it. So I could not exorcise it from the blog and just have a little secret sin. Exposing my need to forgive (and forget-God help me!) was good for me. While I call for others to be accepting, I need to be accepting of others. If I am going to champion the cause of releasing offenders from our indebtedness, I must release others from my debt. Since I am directing others toward the Christ and growing more like Him, then I must grow to be more like Him. Even when I don't want to. Especially when I don't want to.