The Price of Repentance…

Many in this world walk through life with a notion that mistakes are part of growing. They are right. But how many of those who make mistakes look to improve the outcome? How many who make mistakes understand that making the mistake is only HALF the growth? How many of us understand that the true fruition of growth occurs only when one repents, or that the outcome has been improved and changed for the rest of forever, ONLY upon true atonement?

So, once mistakes are made, and one seeks out repentance, how does one determine the price of repentance? What do I mean? Example: If you having a drinking problem, and you have decided to change your ways and repent from such destructive behavior, “WHAT MUST YOU DO IN ORDER TO BE COMPLETELY SURE YOU NEVER COMMIT THAT MISTAKE AGAIN?” – Never surround yourself with others who drink? Change your friends? Leave your neighborhood? Never step foot into another bar for the rest of your life? Never allow your family to bring alcohol into your household? One, or even all of the aforementioned may very well be the price of true atonement.

Complacency is an agent of mishap, and a vehicle to destruction. For no change occurs with out pain, no permanent recourse happens without drastic measures. Mistakes are made because we are aware, yet do not recognize our weaknesses and allow circumstances that we SHOULD have avoided, turn us into victims, thus the saying: ‘victim of circumstance.’ The price of complacency with ourselves, are mistakes. The price of misleading yourself to believe you are strong when you are weak, is blunder. Yet the price of repentance, is sometimes doing away with complacency, shedding the things you once cherished, and allowing yourself to create a drastic change, leading to drastically different results.

When mistakes are made, they can be likened to gangrene. The only remedy is to ‘do without’ a limb. There is no gray area as to the treatment of vicious, consuming habits that cause many to make mistakes as consistent and repetitive as the ocean waves slamming into shore. There is only the black and white approach to such behavior. Root it out, before the bloom, and grasp it at its very beginnings, before such mistakes become habitual. As the bible says, ‘It only takes a little leaven to ferment the whole lump of bread.’ So, what is the price of repentance? One can only answer such a question with a raw perspective of one’s self, with no inhibition, and the scalpel in hand. For, repentance means ‘to do away with’, …. what are you willing to do away with in order to discover true atonement?