Stump Grinding
In 2021, in the midst of the pandemic, many in our state suffered at the hands of a horrific natural disaster: a winter freeze. The extreme cold brought with it devastating effects: loss of power, flooding due to pipes bursting and extremely low temperatures. Another consequence of the storm was the loss of plant life. At my house, we lost several trees, all of which had to be cut down. All that remained were their stumps, which stuck out like hideous memorials to the winter storm.
For the last year, each time I would walk into the backyard, I had to look at those stumps, but that all changed last week. I had had enough. I was ready to purge my yard, and my conscience, of the stumps. So, I rented a large stump grinder and I went to work, grinding the stumps one-by-one into sawdust. While it was demanding work, it was also exhilarating. It felt good to get rid of them.
Old stumps are like old sins. They are not pretty to look at and they will not go away on their own. We often carry them with us and they haunt our conscience, but thankfully, our tradition offers us a spiritual stump grinder – the "Confession of Sin" ("The Book of Common Prayer, p.331). In the Confession, we have the chance to deal with sins that we have been carrying with us: things of which we are not proud; things which we need to grind up. When we confess our sins, God acts like a stump grinder: He grinds our sins into sawdust. They are no longer there. They have been dealt with. As the Psalmist reminds us, “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” (Psalm 103:12) This means that we can move on with confidence, knowing that God has had “mercy” upon us, “pardoned” and “delivered” us from all our sins. This is good news.
So, as you begin your day today, what is the stump (or stumps) in your life that you need to grind up? What is the thing that has been plaguing you? Whatever it may be, I encourage you to take a few moments and give it over to God. Allow Him, in His mercy, to grind it into sawdust. And, as you do this, remember that if God has done away with it, so we can get rid of it too.
