Missing the Bulls Eye

       How good are you at hitting the target?  I have a dart board in the basement which was left here by the former owner.  There are also a couple of darts but to be honest, I don't think I have ever thrown them.  Even the concrete wall is pock marked with failed attempts to hit the target.  That means that not only are people not hitting the bulls eye, they are not even hitting the target which is about 2 feet in diameter.  Maybe, if  I practiced real hard, I could hit the target but never good enough to hang the dart board in the living room.  It needs to stay in a concrete surface which probably dulls the darts when they hit the wall instead of the target.  We have all kinds of "targets" in our life.  They seem to be little goals that we set or objectives that we want to achieve.  We may even get a few of those but not near as many as we would like.   Romans 3:23 says, " For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;"
       God set some goals for us and the objective was absolute perfection.  God requires a bulls eye every time and nothing less.  His targets were listed in the Ten Commandments.  In all reality, there isn't one of them that has been right on for any person except the Lord Jesus Christ.  It is all summed up in the above statement where the Holy Spirit mentioned that all have sinned and come short.   No one ever hit the target when it came to the ten commandments.  No one could ever live that perfect life.  After we get up, out of bed and become awake enough to get around, we begin to experience the "falling short" of God's expectations.  We can fail in two ways.  One of those ways is the actual committing of an act that is against the laws of God.  Secondly, we can fail by omitting something that we should be doing but fail to do.  The positive omissions are like loving God with all of your heart, praying enough, reading enough, witnessing enough or helping enough.  Yes, we all fall short and since we fall short, we need a substitute to do what we cannot do.  We need a sacrifice that is able to make sufficient payment for all of those sins that are piling up and where James reminds that if you are guilty of just one of them, you are guilty of the whole law.  What seems almost hopeless suddenly becomes answered in the death, burial and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.  As the songwriter expressed, "Jesus Paid it All."  Praise God that my sin debt has been paid.  How about your sin debt?