August 13 - Infinity

     Psalm 103:12 – "As far as the east is from the west, is how far God has removed our sins from us."

     Back in the days of 700 BC, in the Middle East, when someone compared the east versus the west, one probably had in mind a span of only a few hundred miles, as even the traders would not routinely travel much farther on their trade routes. So, in the mind of your average non-traveler, the distance between east and west was very far – far enough for our sins to not be a part of us anymore. If you had taken a long journey, and returned home, all the while leaving something personal behind at your destination, you would have deemed it gone forever. A trek back to retrieve it would take a long time and not worth taking again. That is how we as followers of Jesus should see our sins in the light of Jesus "removing" them from us.

     There is even a greater analogy of east versus west. Now that we can travel around the world in 24 hours, east and west do not seem contrasting at all, at least on the surface. That is, until one looks at the surface of a globe. If one starts anywhere on the earth and travels northward, he will eventually reach the north pole and start heading southward. The opposite is also true. If one heads south, he will eventually start heading north after reaching the south pole. The east-west traversal, however, is not the same. Even if one heads east, and goes all the way around the world to his starting point, if he continues in the same direction, he will still be heading east, and will forever be heading east. Therefore, the theoretical distance between east and west is infinity, because if one is always heading east, west is never reached. What an awesome picture of Jesus removing our sins when we give our lives in submission to him!