When I was 13 years old, I went with our scout troop to a summer camp at Camp Chawanakee at Shaver Lake outside of Fresno. It was a fun experience and memorable, for a few reasons. The embarrassing one is that I forgot to take my buddy tag off the board after swimming in the lake, so they thought that I had drowned and so the emergency siren sounded and the whole camp had to come to a screeching halt and everyone had to meet and do a role call. It was a little traumatizing to have to walk up to the camp director and pull my little tag off the board. There was no way to make that look good. I think that at least half of the camp hoped that I was at the bottom of the lake as that would have given them a memorable story to take home.
What I thought I would look like.....
While I may have some issues that I need to work through because of that, I was actually thinking more about some of the merit badge classes that I took. As a new scout, I took the ones that looked the most exciting. The shooting badges were high on my list. So I took rifle shooting and archery as well as a couple others. I don't know what I thought I was going to look like, I don't know if I thought I would be shooting an m-60 machine gun and I would learn some awesome Navy SEALs skills, but instead I shot a .22 and was able to get my grouping within a quarter and earned my badge.
What I actually looked like...
Archery was another story altogether. I failed to score enough points multiple times. I thought that I would have to shoot at a blank wall, then I could paint the target around my arrows. That is the only way that I was going to get the points I needed.
I did get my Eagle Scout Award, but I never got that Archery badge. I tried it three times. I guess God just doesn't want me to play with a bow and arrow. I have come to terms with that... sort of. I do have a healthy respect for archers, though. But what do my unfulfilled Boy Scout goals have to do with anything? I have realized that my failed foray into archery is an allegory for other failures in my life.
I learned that in order to have success in archery, I needed to dedicate more than 5 hours every year to its mastery. I watched others as they were able to hone their skills as they continued to aim for the bullseye. In my last attempt, I only missed the qualifying score by one point, so I had improved, but I still missed the mark.
I think about this in my relationship with God. Luckily, there isn't a "qualifying score" where God is concerned. It is only through grace that we are saved, but I think that there are words that are associated with God today that carry really negative connotations. Think about how you think of the words "sin" and "repentance".
“No matter what happened to you in the past or what is going on in your life right now, it has no power to keep you from having an amazingly good future if you walk by faith with God. God loves you! He wants you to live with victory over sin so you can possess His promises for your life today.”
I think that we frequently seek to avoid both of these acts. But if we can look at what the words mean, not in today's vernacular, but instead if we can look at the entomology of the words, I think that an understanding of the meanings can change our attitudes and perspective on "sin" and "repentance".
In the Hebrew, the word "sin' is "hata", which means "to go astray or to miss the mark". As a failed archer, I know a little something about missing the mark. We cannot look at the meaning of the word "sin" and not look at it's counterpart, "repentance".
“God is not interested in repayment, but in repentance. What heals a broken relationship is sincere love and contrition.”
The Hebrew word for repentance is "shuv". This word has a connotation of turning, or adjusting. In our context of archery, "shuv" means to shift aim. It is what we do when we "miss the mark".
God understands our humanity better than we do and provided a way for us to adjust our aim as often as necessary in order to improve. Thankfully, God is not concerned about us hitting the bullseye, he is only interested in our desire to shift our aim.
So if you have "missed the mark", don't beat yourself up. Take another arrow from your quiver and adjust your aim. God doesn't expect perfection, He expects effort.