Have you ever watched a little girl get her new dress dirty just before church? Little girls get their dresses dirty sometimes when they really don't mean to, and then they're faced with a number of options.

They can try to hide the dirt by folding the dress over and walking close to their mother. Or they can pretend that they don't know about the dirt: "Dirt? I didn't know there was any dirt on me!" Or they can just try to stay away from mother so that mother can't see the dirt. If mother comes into the living room, the daughter goes into the bedroom. She'll try to get in the car before her mother gets in.

Or she can do what she ought to do if she has a mother who reflects the grace of God. She can go to her mother and say, "Look, my dress is dirty." If her mother is right on, she does something about the dirt but not the daughter.