Sweet but Sinful

Several old picture albums and many loose photographs were scattered over the living room floor. "I'd like to rearrange our albums with captions above the pictures," explained Mom when Greta and Marnie asked what she was doing. "You can sort these photos and see if you can come up with something to write about them.""Okay." Greta reached for a picture. "'Lifeguard blows whistle at Marnie' will be great for this one. This was the time we were at the beach and the lifeguard yelled at you for disobeying the rules, Marnie. Remember?"Marnie rolled her eyes and picked up another photo. "Look at this picture of our Thanksgiving dinner last year. The food looks yummy!""The caption for that could say, 'Give thanks for food--if there's any left,'" said Greta with a grin. "I remember you tried to grab the gravy before anyone else and it splattered all over the floor." She picked up another photo and laughed. "Look at this one, Marnie. You're pouting in this snapshot. We could call it--""Will you stop bringing up all the bad things I've done!" Marnie said angrily. "You're no angel yourself, you know. In fact, you can really be a pain sometimes!""Well, none of these pictures remind you of bad things about me," Greta said smugly."That's because you're two-faced. You smile for the camera so everyone thinks you're so sweet and good, and then you do something bad when no one's looking!"Mom picked up two photos. "In these pictures I see not one but two sinful little girls.""Mom! Those are our baby pictures," said Greta. "You can't find anything bad about a baby.""You look sweet enough," Mom agreed. "But every single baby is born a sinner--no one is better than anyone else. The Bible says we're all sinners from the moment we're born." She looked at the girls. "It doesn't matter what you see in any of these pictures--the Bible is the only thing you need to look at to know you're both sinners. But the Bible is also a picture of God's love for you. Jesus died for our sins so we could be saved, and He doesn't take snapshots of the bad things we do. Whenever we do something wrong, we can confess our sin and He will forgive us." –Nance E. Keyes