Lord, Thank You for Second Chances.

Theo only eats a handful of things at dinner time. Pasta with cheese. Fajitas. Tuna and rice.

After that, the list runs out fast, and anything new that lands on his plate gets the same review before he has even touched it: "I don't like it." Then the tears.

We used to make him something else. He'd push the dinner away, a peanut butter sandwich would appear, and everyone got through the evening.

We've stopped doing that.

Now what's on the table is what there is, and if he doesn't want it, he can get down and go and play.

But it comes with a warning: "You'll be hungry later." He shrugs it off every time.

Then, an hour and a half later, teeth brushed, lights off, story finished, we get the predictable words, "I'm hungry."

So up the stairs goes the dinner he wouldn't touch. He reluctantly eats some. Complaining the whole way through that it's cold.

The second chance he gets is the first one, gone cold. Same food, not nearly as tasty.

And it arrives with a look from me that says I told you so, and a small speech about how tomorrow he could just eat it while it's warm.

I come back to God the same way. Not with a missed opportunity, but with the same failure.

The thing I promised I wouldn't do again and did anyway. The apology I've already made, in almost the same words, more times than I want to count.

And on the way back I'm braced for the cold plate. I assume forgiveness comes reheated. That the first time it was warm and full and freely given, and this time, because it's me again, because it's this again, what's left will be a smaller, cooler version of it, handed over with a lecture on the side.

Psalm 103 says, "He will not always accuse; neither will He stay angry forever. He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor repaid us for our iniquities."

Not according to our sins. Not repaid. There is no ledger being read back to you at the bottom of the stairs, no tally of how many times you have made this walk before.

God does not hand you yesterday's mercy warmed up. It is made fresh, and it is the whole thing, every time.

So if you are coming back today with the same thing you brought last time, and the time before that, He is not waiting at the top of the stairs with His arms folded.

He forgives it completely, and then He does not bring it up again. What He is bringing you is not cold. It never was.