Do I smell?

Reading some Luke this morning, and had some thoughts that I shared via email with my beloved today. Since I'm sitting bored out of my skull at work, I thought I would post some of these thoughts and get some feedback if anyone is interested (I'm at my night job where I just answer phones and try to not fall asleep, so I am allowed to waste time on the internet).

After reading the passage in Luke 5 about Jesus at the beginning of his ministry, calling his first disciples (the Zebedee brothers, Simon Peter), healing the leper and the paralytic... two separate thoughts came to mind:

1) It's interesting that Peter's first response to the miracle of the net overflowing of fish was not a casual, "Thanks, Jesus," or anything trite or jovial... he responded by falling to his knees and asking Jesus to "depart from me, for I am a sinful man." It reminds me of what Lisa said yesterday on the way to church as we were discussing Isaiah 40-43: we can not come to true repentance without first recognizing God for who He really is. It is then that we realize the magnitude of our sinfulness in comparison to God's holiness and our desperate need for Him.

2) I was thinking about what Jesus must have thought when He looked around and saw the effect of sin everywhere: spiritual darkness, distorted thinking, and physical illness/disease. Can you imagine living on the perfect earth you created and see, smell, and hear vividly how the curse of sin has corrupted and decayed it? We get so used to the sights, sounds, and smells of decaying sin around us because it permeates from our being as well.

Let's pray for a "sensitiviy to the stench of sin," since we have been washed by regeneration and renewed by the Spirit (Titus 3). On the other hand, we must not walk in condemnation because our clothes still smell of sin, but instead by grace we could press on, run the race, and lay hold of the prize that has been set before us by the Author and Finisher of our faith, Jesus Christ (Phil. 3, Heb. 12).