"Oh, the depths of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways!" If my soul could have spoken its reaction to the world during this time, these would have been its words. Oh, the depths of the riches! Even as a believer, even as Christ is changing you over the years and opening your eyes to the new and the wonderful, you can still live in a shadow. It is all too easy to work towards righteousness on your own strength. With Paul I could boast of my pitiful standards, always deceiving myself into believing that my works pleased God. Never realizing my works were filth before His glory. Never realizing that He didn't want my burnt offerings. Never realizing that He wanted me.
One of the trees outside my window has refused, all this fall, to let her leaves turn color. She has been nearly as green as in the summer, even after the other trees lost their leaves and stood stark and gray against the November earth. But it snowed last night, the leaves froze on the branches, and now the ground is carpeted green, leaves fallen all at once. It was such a November for me two years ago. Refusing my humanity, denying my weakness, somehow keeping my green leaves long after they should have fallen. It was such a November for me, fifteen years too long, before the frozen storm thawed my proud heart in a single night. Die, to live. No condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.
No condemnation! I, who above all deserved condemnation! I, who had hidden even from myself the depth of my guilt over the confines of years. It all burst upon me with curious intensity now, and I was left gloriously shell shocked. Where sin increased, grace now abounded all the more. This harlot, who had been forgiven much, learned at last to love much. For who will bring a charge against God's elect?
Oh, the depth of the riches of wisdom and knowledge of God. This grace. This widening, ever expanding, always limitless grace, separating my clinging sin from me as far as the east is from the west. I did not understand. But for the first time I understood. In one gut wrenching, perfect frame of time and space, I knew both the magnitude of my own depravity and the all encompassing, death defying, astronomical strength of a freedom I had never realized.
I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. I am convinced of it, because I, wretched woman that I am, was unable to be separated from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus my Lord. The words soared on wings that shielded me. Abba! Father!
I read Romans with new eyes that November. I feasted on the Word that had once become flesh and died for my sin. I drank deeply the wine that flowed over my guilt, and every word was a gift, and every grace was a miracle, and all things were grace, for from Him and through Him and to Him were all things.
And such they are still. May I remember the eyes that saw so clearly, that November two years ago. May I remember the heart that held so tightly onto living words with the desperate joy of one long-starved for this one central truth. May I never forget the furious grace that destroyed deceptive chains. Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!
For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.
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