There’s two words you don’t hear very often.

I’m sorry.

I find, in workplace speak, the closest you usually get is ‘Apologies’.

To me, that feels less like one is taking ownership of whatever the issue is at hand. Perhaps that’s just me – or semantics – but it does feel slightly more brisk and insincere than something with a personal pronoun such as:

I’m sorry.

I need to practise saying it more. First and foremost to God but then also to other people.

It’s not something that is readily practised or encouraged by the culture I’m living in but I don’t want to be dictated by that. I want to be dictated by what I read in the pages of the Bible.

Confessing your sins isn’t something that’s particularly fashionable either.

But, likewise, I don’t want to be driven by fashion. Fashion comes and goes, but God’s word lasts forever.

Often when I come to confess my sins I frequently find I have nothing that comes to mind. In part, I’d say that’s burnout, but it concerns me that I can’t think of anything to confess.

Sometimes I just confess the fact that I can’t think of anything despite my awareness that the list of what I should be confessing to God is actually miles long. I know it is. The white noise and tumbleweeds in my brain are not evidence that I’m kicking goals spiritually. Not at all.

This all concerns me, but at the same time I know my God is bigger than that.

I know that he knows about my white noise and tumbleweeds. I know he understands where my heart is, even if my brain is not in gear.

I know he knows what I’m thinking, even if I can’t say it. I’m sure he knows:

I’m sorry.

Because I really am.

Yours sincerely,

Alison