The public schools used to have children memorize such sentences. No more. Teaching that sin has consequences is not proper in a Godless age.
However, we can think about a grain of wheat being dropped into a mill. Maybe one of those big, water-powered mills from a few decades ago.
The grain was dropped into a chute, and gradually fell through the mill until it dropped between two grindstones, usually granite. The top stone spun. The grain between it and the still stone below was pulverized so thoroughly that it was turned into powder.
Any time we Catholic Fundamentalists start to thinking we’re pretty hot stuff, we picture ourselves as a grain of that wheat. Like all the other grains of wheat going through the mill, we fall down the chute.
When we hit the grindstones, the granite grindstones hit us. They are so hard and utterly unyielding that we are powdered. Every single sin that we have committed is exposed as a flawed piece of powder within the tiny pile we’ve become. Every single sin is glowing in evil, neon hues.
No matter how well we’ve hidden, denied, or ignored them, every single unforgiven sin is blazing away for God and His angels to see.
Judgment is easy. In terms of light, if shimmering sins blot out whatever good we’ve done, there is just not enough there to be resurrected. In terms of weight, if unforgiven sins outweigh our good deeds, we are lost.
All the truth there is to know about us is in the little, tiny pile of powder transferred from the millstone to the scale. By some bizarre coincidence, it weighs exactly one grain.
Minus the sins.
