For the past two and a half years I have not been able to shake the feeling that someone is watching me. Everywhere I go I get the feeling that someone is looking over my shoulder. Ever since my son Drew was born two and a half years ago there has been someone watching me. Just yesterday he watched me wake up (actually he woke me up by staring at me from approximately two inches away—this happens almost daily), he watched me make breakfast, he watched me get dressed, he watched me rake leaves, he watched me repair a broken faucet in my shower, and he wanted desperately to watch me “go hunt the deer,” but I was able to convince him that he would have to wait until he was older. Young children are obsessed with their parents. They are very observant and they are great copy-cats. I learned quickly that I must watch what I say and do because Drew is watching and he will inevitably follow suit—for better or for worse! 

It is impossible to have an awareness of God without some understanding of the fact that he is holy. At the same time it is very difficult for us to wrap our minds around the concept of holiness. Holiness is difficult for us to understand because it is so foreign to our experience. We are well acquainted with brokenness and the miseries that accompany it in this life. We know all about sickness, sorrow, pain, and death. We have no trouble understanding sexual immorality, impurity, idolatry, enmity, strife, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, and things like these. But holiness, that’s an entirely different matter. In fact, one of the most helpful ways we can understand holiness is to see it as the absence of these and other sins. God is holy specifically because none of the previously mentioned sins apply to him. John says that “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” (1 John 1:5). This is another way of saying that God is holy. 

But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, And a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, But that all should reach repentance. 2 Peter 3:8–9