Try a different way

Everyone has something they just keep doing wrong. No matter how hard you try to be good, you always seems to end up smacking your brother or hogging the swings at the park. You feel guilty, but you do it anyway.

Jesus knew what it was like to keep goofing up when you don't want to. In this week's Gospel (Mark 9:38-48), He uses a strange story to talk about how to stop.

"If your hand makes you sin, cut it off," Jesus said. "It's better to go to heaven with one hand than to have two hands and not get into heaven. If your eye makes you sin, take it out. It's better to enter heaven with one eye than to have two, and not go to heaven."

When there's something you keep doing wrong, you try lots of ways to stop. You make promises to yourself that you'll never hit your brother again, or pray to God that you remember to share the swings. But those promises and prayers don't always stop you!

In the Gospel story, Jesus didn't really mean we should cut off our hands and eyes. He meant that when you're really tired of making a mistake, it's important to stop -- and you can do that by finding something better to do.

If you end up smacking your brother every time you sit next to him, Jesus was saying, don't sit next to him! If you can't give other kids a turn on the swings, play on the jungle gym instead until you learn to share.

Jesus knows it's hard to stop making a mistake when you've been doing it for a while. That's why He said that instead of letting our hands make us sin, we should "cut them off." He meant that instead of goofing up the same thing over and over, we should try something else.

Jesus didn't want us to hurt ourselves; He wanted us to not hurt other people, so we can go to heaven with Him someday!

PRAYER FOR THE WEEK: Jesus, help me find new ways to change my mistakes. Amen!