Failure. There's a word that's sure to dampen your day. Even with the humorous connotations associated with the word FAIL these days (such as that promoted by the site referenced in my title), phrases like "You failed" and "You're a failure" hurt. They hurt a lot.

We don't like to fail and we don't like to think about or talk about failure unless it is someone else's. Then it becomes a piece of tragic drama we can watch unfold in fascinated sympathy, or a mean-spirited comedy designed to make ourselves feel better.

But we all fail, whether we'll admit it willingly or not (and of course we might be magnanimous enough to admit it generally, yet never specifically) and so failure is an important part of human experience. I'm here today to talk about my failure and to explain why it is so important to recognise and yet so ultimately irrelevant (from the right perspective).

What is my failure? I broke my Lent this weekend past.

There are two common attitudes to such an admission. The first is to say, 'oh well, it doesn't really matter' and to either give up or to carry on as if nothing had happened.  The second attitude is to treat it as something very, very serious, to beat oneself up about it, get depressed and then to either give up, feeling a failure, or to carry on with the sense of tarnished accomplishment.  Both of these attitudes are wrong and I will explain why shortly, but firstly, how and why did I break my Lent?

I was away over the weekend visiting family.  It was the first opportunity for us to take our daughter over to Northern Ireland to see my side of the family.  For me, going back over to Northern Ireland is a little like an act of mental time travel.  I return, not only to where I am from but also, in some senses, to what I was like.  You see my family do not live in a manner particularly similar to the way I live now, in a number of ways, and, though I love them all dearly, they are (mostly) not Christian.

So, when I visit my parents, I can expect the television to be on most of the day.  When I visit my brother, I can expect there to be a film playing on his (enormous) screen.  It is a world filled with distractions of the kind this Lent is supposed to be an escape from, and whilst much of what was on TV at my parents was the usual daytime assortment of house auctions and holiday horrors, there were also soap operas, hours of them (and I don't even like them) and the temptation to watch that which I enjoy.

I actually broke my Lent several ways, and whilst I can list the reasons for all of it (TV on all the time, not wanting to be anti-social by leaving the room, unable to focus on theology/bible because of distractions, etc.) these are, at best, just excuses designed to hide the more basic truth - I am a sinner, and, if given enough opportunity, I will turn away from God.  It wasn't my family's fault, in any way - what they were doing was not wrong - it was all mine.  This is perhaps best summed up in my attitude to my quiet times over the weekend, which hardly happened at all.  Why?  Because I didn't want to do them when other people were around, because, I suppose, I was a little bit ashamed of it in front of non-Christian family members.

To put this in perspective, for those of you who are not Christian yourselves, imagine a situation where a friend who you care about a great deal suddenly starts ignoring you in public and you realise that it's because they are with their family.  You understand that they are ashamed of you, or their relationship with you, or something about you and they don't want their family to see.  How hurt would you be?  How angry?  We do this to God all the time, in a thousand different ways, by not loving Him as we ought, not obeying Him as we ought, by side-lining Him, focussing on things less important than Him, by thinking that spending a few minutes every Sunday offering lip-service to Him is going to be enough to get us into Heaven - completely ignoring any aspect of relationship or response to the things He has done for us.

How would you feel, if you were Him? Putting ourselves in God's shoes (so to speak) is a very good way of dismissing the rubbish attitude that God is there just to make us feel better, or that, 'if there is a God, He should just let us all get on with it'. People never stop to consider how God feels, because, I suppose, it never occurs to them that he might feel anything at all.

Well, God is hurt by His wayward creation, because He still loves us, and wants the best for us, which is Him.  Our desire to do our own thing, turning away from Him deliberately, or out of neglect, is the very essence of Sin - the ultimate failure - and it's what keeps us from being complete humans, with a right relationship with our Maker, and the rest of creation. It's for that reason that we cannot just dismiss our failures, no matter how small - they are killing us! But, of course, this is not the end of the story.

The Christian gospel begins with human rebellion against God, but it ends with a sacrifice made by God to atone for that sin - Jesus, the Christ, crucified by the Jews and the Romans in first century Palestine - and a risen, conquering hero who has defeated sin and death and to whom we may be united in spirit. That means our failures, our sin, can be forgiven, because God looks on the Christian and sees Christ. We are adopted by the Father of all creation and let off because the punishment that should have been ours has already been dealt and upon one who is utterly innocent, utterly perfect.

What does this mean for our response to failure as Christians, then? Firstly we admit it, confessing our sin before God. Secondly we repent, turning away from the wrong things we have done with all the sincerity we can muster (God knows we're pretty rubbish at this too - it's notable that Jesus, who was without any sin, still undertook John's baptism of repentance at the start of His ministry, once again doing for us that which we can never do as we ought). Thirdly we ask for forgiveness and accept it as a free gift from God. Finally, we respond in love - and that means loving obedience - to our heavenly Father.

In the case of my broken Lent, that means carrying on with what I set out to do initially, putting aside distractions and earnestly seeking God. How is that different from the two 'carrying on's I listed at the start? Well, it's all about the attitude of the heart. I don't treat my failure as if it didn't matter because it does - it's a rebellion against the Father who loves me and who sent his Son to die for me - but neither do I beat myself up about it. God has forgiven me in His infinite grace and mercy and wants me to move on and serve Him. To wallow in misery, self-pity or self-loathing, would only be to sin again, ignoring all that Christ has achieved for me!

So, I returned home and returned to the pattern I had set out at the start and I bask in God's good grace and his inexpressible - inconceivable - love for me, returning just a fragment of that love - never enough, but striving to be more.

Until next time, go well and God bless.