Ever since that fateful day two years ago, when I opened my unwilling mouth to admit sins kept secret for fifteen years, I have loved the Apostle Paul's letter to the Romans. I remember that my reading had brought me several chapters into the book before Grace shattered my carefully constructed world. When I picked my Bible up again, every verse glowed at me with a life I had never seen in color. I cried at the beauty overwhelming my tired soul, and laughed aloud through my tears at the sudden freedom.
"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.
It is hard to live under grace. It is hard to accept love without condition, without deserving any part of this favor shown me. To be loved not because I'm beautiful, or joyful, or good at washing dishes. To be loved not because I clean without being asked, or that I cook well, or that I am ever patient and kind. Loved because I am loved is hard to let be.
As I drive to visit my brother, I think hard on Galatians 2, freeing my head from my selfish desires for the first time in far too long. I try to reason out what it means, these life feeding verses, and how it is no longer I who live. Sun above me sharply glints against crisply reddened leaves. The sky spreads its arms wide to embrace my adventure. How is it no longer I who live, but Christ Who lives in me? My sins weigh heavily on me, even as I turn my glad face to the day.
Some people seem born to a holiness beyond what I will ever know this side of eternity. I have to slaughter myself daily in order to live in any semblance of holy. Would that I had cut off both hands and feet and ears and eyes and tongue...my mind would still corrupt and boil within me. Yet I have been crucified with Christ.
I want to deserve the immensity given to me. To pay back somehow for some small portion of this blessedness. I try harder, always trying harder, always more prone to fall harder. I refuse to meet God's eye, angry with myself for falling? Or is it anger with Him for letting me fall? I demand my own perfection sullenly, thinking that surely this time I have done enough wrong for many lives. No more, please. Take this dish back to the kitchen. It is underdone and wicked. The plate refuses to hold it. My testimony is already padded thickly. I have been given much, and surely God will require much, but I have nothing to show. Paul claims that he is chief among sinners, but he and I will fight for the title, and I am confident in my own success.
I live by faith because I have nothing else to offer. My belief must be counted as righteousness, for I am small. By law shall no flesh be justified. Dare I say that Christ's death was in vain? I must live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. This is the life I now live in the flesh.
Hills of rock and purple fringed bushes fly past me. I am still as worlds pass by, this trip by daylight, splashed across a brief word in my history. My smallness is surrounded.
Some people seem born into holiness, but I know my flesh, born into depravity. How much has been forgiven me. Joy rises out of this smallness. God made flesh. Immensity cloistered in human womb (Donne). My life drops from the faucet onto an ocean of saints who whisper softly from pages breathed of Sovereignty. "Endure for the joy set before you." In the presence of God alone is fullness of joy. Sin pushes me to my knees, to His presence, to His joy.
Oh, and doesn't joy fill my cup, my broken vessel, my humble clay.
It is raining now. It will not stop until I reach my destination, but Christ is in it. He is here in the rain. Every drop fallen onto my windshield is a new wave of Grace.
It is surely wrong to wish sin on anyone, but the temptation is there, when I know how sin brought me to realization of grace. While I tremble in fear to wish the deep and obvious sin of my own heart, I think that surely a more accurate view of self-depravity may be desired. Still, strange as it sounds, I have had occasion to pity people for not having the power hungry struggle that I have with obvious, degrading, disheartening evil in my heart. Deception comes easily for me.
I wish people would be able to grasp reality without the pain and fear I have put myself through, but there is part of me that knows: The worst thing in my life was the best thing for my life. From much sin, I found much grace.
Sometimes people suffer from a righteousness that exceeds their own abilities--a crushing legalism of superiority. I wish they could be free. I wish they could have that one shattering moment of confession to dramatic failure of years past and present, and experience the stark otherworldly emptiness of a vessel cracked after a lifetime of stagnation. I want that moment for them, when they walk under a night sky and look at the stars with the new and numbing knowledge that nothing stands between them and their Creator.
I want these people to see the world as if for the first time~the world they've taken for granted all these years, because, you know, they're just children of the King and this is their home. This palace of earth is where we grew up, so maybe the novelty is lost on us until we have that moment of Grace Come Down. I guess I wish people would know firsthand the absence of honesty, just so they could experience its liberation and health with its sweeping fullness of gratitude.
Dear me. I want people, these people, us people, you people, to have at least one moment where joy is so overwhelming that there is no response sufficient. That your face might shine with God's own presence, because, for the first time, God gives you a glimpse of how little you deserve and how overpowering is His love for you. For you, His child. How I wish for this to happen for each one of us.
Redemption of an entire life's worth of unconfessed, unacknowledged, fearful lowness...there are no words to express it. I can only continue to hope for these many others to experience it. For you, many others. I can only continue to hope that the worst thing in many lives be turned into the greatest gift~as mine was~the discovering of grace become embodied. And may we all be stripped of our restrictive false righteousness to find fullness of joy in His presence.
All is grace.
