Let me give you a verse - if you remember only one thing from today - this is it: Romans 12: 8, “As far as it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” Did you hear that: “As far as it is possible” - because sometimes it’s not - “as far as it depends on you” - you are not responsible for the other person - “live at peace with everyone.” And this is because you have better things to do than walk around being angry or hoping birds poop on people’s cars. You do not have to rent space out in your head to people. You don’t have to let people hijack your thoughts. You do not have to let people steal your peace or make you feel miserable. You may not be able to fix things - or fix them - but you can choose to live at peace. We can’t always - in fact more and more we rarely can control a lot of the things that happen to us - but we can always choose how we respond. And that is important!

St. Peter quoted Proverbs 26:11, but he added, “a pig returns to the mud after a bath.” I am amazed how well Bible writers know me. I finally throw up all the bad stuff I gorged on - and like a dog return to it. God finally gets me cleaned up and I jump back in the mud. Jesus sets me free - and I run back into the cell and lock the door.

The world loves “me-based solutions to all our me-based problems.” How long do you think it will be before we figure out we cannot “hate ourselves into a new person we will love?” Before we realize “tearing someone else down doesn’t make us a better person?” Before we get tired of trying to prove we’re worth something? Before we look in the mirror and not worry about what anyone else thinks about us - but see a unique and unreproducible miracle of God.

What Jesus offered Legion - what He offers us - is more than healing. He offers forgiveness. C.S. Lewis differentiated between the two in his classic, The Problem of Pain, “We have a strange illusion that mere time cancels sin. I have heard others, and I have heard myself, recounting cruelties...committed in boyhood as if they were no concern of the present. But mere time does nothing either to the fact or to the guilt of a sin. The guilt is washed out not by time but by repentance and the blood of Christ: if we have repented these early sins we should remember the price of our forgiveness and be humbled.”