Spelling Bee

My Lord and my God,

I have been a liar from the beginning, and foolish enough to think that I had fooled both God and man. I remember the day of the 6th grade spelling bee. The competition was thinning as I advanced to a moderate level. You were there, Lord, as you are everywhere. There is nowhere to hide from your sight.

The word was “grammer.” Or was it “grammar”? After this day, I would never again forget the correct spelling. In my arrogance, I sought to speed through the letters to impress children and teachers you remember more clearly than I. G-r-a-m-m-e-r. “Wait, did you say a-r or e-r?” Which did I say or which would allow me to pass? I knew the truth and I despised it. As I had done wrong, I hated the light and did not come to the light, lest my works should be exposed.1 “A-r,” I hissed, and slithered back to my seat.

I went with a most uneasy triumph, strutting before the entire assembly of my school and indeed before your majesty, itself. How feeble the pretensions of man must look to you who sits enthroned on high, ruling all creation. We are all like children who think they’ve conned the system and poked loopholes in your justice, so impressed by ourselves that we’ve flattened our spiritual senses dull. Even in the innocence of youth, this has been my sinful pattern, and it is the vicious tendency of all of us mankind. Our eyes only ever drift off ourselves to see if others have noticed our own grandeur. But even if they do, it’s all a sham, and the moment doesn’t last.

My turn came again, God, but before the moderator could even open her mouth, a coalition of teachers interrupted, with words to this effect: “Excuse me, but we all heard Clay say the wrong spelling last time.” Hot, crimson embarrassment saturated me, as my bubble of deception popped for all to see. I was exposed before the light and so was my very act of seeking to hide from it.

I skulked back to my seat amid snickers from my peers and searing shame. I threw off all who tried to ask me what happened. I craved the dark all the more. Like a bug under an overturned stone, I curled up in defiance of the brilliant and inescapable exposure in vain. Only now before men did I feel the shame, but you were not blinking when I lied, Lord. The greatest sin that day was fearing men rather than you.

This is my present struggle, too, O Christ. For the sake of the esteem of men, I abhor your correction, because to accept it is to accept my own error. I hate your forgiveness, because in accepting it I accept my own sin. Vastly preferred is to have no need of correction and forgiveness, to be above your judgment, to be perfect. Yet it is you alone who is perfect. Help me to see my weakness and imperfection and then eclipse it with your glorious righteousness which you have given me through your atoning death. If I excel, let it be your excellence in me. If I fail disastrously, let me seek your face in prayer and in your scriptures. You are God alone.

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us” (1 John 1:9-10). 

Amen.