Posted: January 20th, 2012 |
Filed under: life | Tags: aftermath, grace, sin |
4 Comments »
You’ve been in rain so long, warm and dry is a memory you’re too tired to visit. I know where you are, punishing yourself because you think it’s what you deserve.
You believe in a God of love so intense that it demands justice. You think there is no justice big enough for what you did because people still have to walk in the life sentence you gave them with your mistakes. The rain isn’t strong enough to penetrate the outside and wash you on the inside. But, still, you’re out there hoping that your skin will open up and just let you drown.
God is a God of love and it’s a love so intense that it demands justice. There is no mistake in that belief. It’s just that you have forgotten Jesus. Was that not enough? Justice fell on Him so that you could come back inside.
God is not afraid of getting wet. He leaves the windows open so that maybe you’ll wash in with the rain you’re trying to drown in.
The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture. -Romans 8:34-35 MSG
Posted: January 11th, 2012 |
Filed under: life | Tags: aftermath, faith, grace, purpose, sin |
11 Comments »
It was the beginning of summer in 2006 and I was sitting on my back deck by myself. I went out there to drink my coffee and have a conversation with my Creator. I was hurting… mourning the loss of myself and my friends and my marriage. Life was moving forward. Spring had sprung and it was warm enough to have coffee outside in the morning. I had a baby that March and she was getting chubby and smiling her constant smile.
But, I was a mess. Life was calling me forward and I didn’t want to go. Grace was unknown territory for me and I didn’t know the rules. I needed the rules, they made me feel safe, but I had broken them all and I was a shattered cast-out who was going to live though it.
I knew a lot about church and churchiness and what you’re supposed to do when you’re hurting. You’re supposed to praise God in the pain, for what-I didn’t know-…, but I really wanted to do something right.
My house sits up on a hill and my back deck faces the sky where all of my sins were carried out. It faces the sky that blankets all the people who I hurt. I looked at the all knowing sky, who could see everything, and I thought about God. I thought about my failure. I thought about the unknown future for all of us and I winced.
“God,” I prayed, “thank you for rebuilding me.”
I knew He was rebuilding me. I didn’t know what my new life would look like or how He was going to redeem my pathetic mess, but I still acknowledged and said it out loud.
When God talks to me, it’s a voice that seems to come from within, but I know it’s not my voice. It’s an interjected thought that is received exactly the way a spoken word would be received. God spoke up immediately…
“Serena, I removed you.”
The thought struck me as odd and foreign. His voice always quickens my heart. He uses few words and they’re profound enough to keep speaking when the words stop. I didn’t have to think about it for long because I understood it. It took me a bit to accept it, but I understood it.
Removed.
Removed from relationships. Removed from my religious community. Removed from my old life. Removed from my old comfort. Removed from my old safety…. I was removed and set down in a space of faith or die.
This stole the shame and guilt of ruining something I didn’t know how to fix. This truth gave it new meaning and purpose. My failure tangled with grace and I really didn’t know which way was up.
I once was a dried up piece of dirt until somebody planted a seed of faith. The seed took and the rains soaked me and washed me. I grew into a green sprout, drinking the sun and digging in deeper with my roots. I grew taller and stronger, even though I was surrounded by weeds. Weeds of twisted faith and oppression surrounded me and stunted my growth. Then I was ripped up and sent through a sieve. My hard covering was torn from me and I was naked and exposed. Scared to death until the Field Master’s hands scooped me up and called me a seed. The cycle of life and death continues and I morph with the will of the Field Owner.
Removed.
He removed me and replanted me and sang over me. The same voice that commanded the expanse of space to divide, and the water to fill the earth, and the land to divide the water, and the birds to fly, and the beasts to roam, and the body of Adam to live is the same voice that commanded my life to take a new form. The breath of His words filled my dead spaces and commanded me to, “Grow.”
It’s God’s grace that gives me life. It’s His choosing that gives me purpose. I am not my own and I know this because I’ve seen too much. I know better. I don’t do everything right. I stumble around with the best and worst, but I know what my purpose is. I know that my life is not my own. I was saved for a purpose and continue to try to live that out. Every breath I breathe is a gift. Every smile, every laugh, every lazy night with my family and good meal from my oven is a gift.
I was knocked down and torn to pieces by my failure. I was on the wrong track and I didn’t know it until I was blinded and disoriented. Then the voice of Jesus spoke grace into me and gave me a new purpose.
‘But rise and stand upon your feet, for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you as a servant and witness to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you, delivering you from your people and from the Gentiles—to whom I am sending you to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.’ -Acts 26:15-18
If you are like I was, lost and torn to pieces by your own failure, then consider this message. You are not abandoned or cast out. You are loved. You are being rebuilt. And maybe, you too, have been removed. Removed ‘from your people’ and from the others. You’re a traveler in a foreign land and you have a message. Give in to grace. Fall in to forgiveness. Consider the purpose. The sun will rise and dissipate this dark night that scares and torments you. I have seen the sunrise. I have felt the warmth of new life on my face and I am here to tell you that it’s real.
Posted: November 23rd, 2011 |
Filed under: God, life | Tags: aftermath, faith, grace, purpose, sin |
12 Comments »
Broken One,
I’m thinking about you today. Holidays don’t make everything better, do they? Holidays only stop the routine distractions that keep you from thinking and shove the reality into your tiny tent of safety. Reality echos off the emptiness. The things you used to bake aren’t welcome on that table anymore. Life goes on without you and you’re still here to feel the loss. They have each other and you have your emptiness.
Something I learned in that tent is that all the meaning I used to give these weeks of whirl are drowned out by the deeper meaning of what they’re really about. Instead of my ability to create a magical experience, I was whittled down to complete inability to right my wrongs and fix my mistakes. When I was unable to create meaning, Meaning found me. The removal of routine distractions forced me to see what had real Meaning.
It’s a quiet voice that won’t let you die. It’s as without effort as your heartbeat and your never ending breath in and breath out. You can’t stop life no more than you can create it. You can’t will yourself dead just like the dying can’t will themselves more time. The fact that you’re still alive is proof that you still have purpose. It all has purpose. The pain of emptiness, loneliness, and brokenness have a purpose and no one can save you from it. You may not know it right now, (I’m almost positive that you don’t), but your pain is your salvation…real salvation, not sentimental salvation. No one can save you from what becomes your salvation.
The fact that you’re still here is proof that your story isn’t over. That kind of hope is stronger than your strength to make it out of the desire to make it. You know you’re at the bottom when you no longer have the desire to make it, but life won’t let you go. There is still hope of rescue when physical death won’t rescue you.
I want to challenge you to reject self-pity. I know, at times, it has become your comfort. I know that self-pity carries a cheap hope that someone will see your eyes and do something to take your pain away. But, if someone can do that for you, then it alleviates your need for Jesus. Don’t do that. Don’t look to a person to do what only He can. I promise you, even though He feels like He’s keeping His distance, just like everyone else, He’s not. Your suffering is only for a moment in the big collection of moments.
Suffering from your own failure is aggressive because there is no relief to be found in guiltlessness. Guiltlessness doesn’t exist.
This is me offering a silent nod in your direction because I recognize where you are. I know how bad it hurts. But, more than knowing the suffering, I know the rest. I know what is coming and I have no doubt in your survival. I see your suffering as birth pains. You can’t rescue a woman from labor because you would take the new life away from her. Like a woman in labor, embrace the suffering with hope. Hope is the balm for the pain.
You’re not the only ones plunged into these hard times. It’s the same with Christians all over the world. So keep a firm grip on the faith. The suffering won’t last forever. It won’t be long before this generous God who has great plans for us in Christ—eternal and glorious plans they are!—will have you put together and on your feet for good. He gets the last word; yes, he does. -1 Peter 5:9-11 MSG
Those of us who have been through it, like women who can recount every moment of childbirth, sit and marvel at the miracle. You don’t fully understand unless you’ve been through it, and those who have love to tell the story. You’re going to have your own story soon. You’ll be able to sit around a table of Thanksgiving with new meaning and new life. All the old that you thought was real will fade in comparison.
Will you do something today? I know you don’t feel like it, I know it seems useless, but will you bake something? Bake something as a testament to the fact that you’re still alive. Eat at a table even though some of the chairs are empty. They won’t always be empty. Bake a meal as a labor of hope. It lets the wolves know that they have not yet sucked every last drop of blood from your veins.
Take this promise from God and use it to get through the next few weeks. I know it hurts, but there is hope. I know this because I have seen it. He knows where you are, that you’re in exile. He knows that everything has been destroyed, and He knows how bad it hurts. He’s not leaving you there, He’s making something new. He’ll never leave you, even if everyone else does.
This exile is just like the days of Noah for me: I promised then that the waters of Noah would never again flood the earth. I’m promising now no more anger, no more dressing you down. For even if the mountains walk away and the hills fall to pieces,
My love won’t walk away from you, my covenant commitment of peace won’t fall apart.” The God who has compassion on you says so. -Isaiah 54:9-10 MSG
The God who has compassion on you says so.
