There is no better illustration of what God has been teaching me this past year than to tell about something I recently experienced. It’s so easy for me to think that I’m doing all right with my life and my faith. I go to a public school where most of the kids spend their weekends in a blur of alcohol. In seeing the mess of their lives, it’s easy to stop every once in a while and look in the mirror and tell myself that I am not doing ALL that bad. Actually it’s the simplest thing in the world to feel like I’m a good person if I compare myself to them. But that is not how God sees it or me and most definitely not reality.
I could hear the anger in their voices and see it in their faces –anger that was rooted so deeply because every single one of them believed that this “god” had failed them in some way or another. And here they gathered together to yell insults and in some way avenge their wrongs. I could barely watch, because the first thought that hit me was that this is what the crucifixion must have felt like – all those thousands of people standing around and yelling “crucify, crucify” at a man who at that very moment was giving his life for them.
The irony stung me, because this God who we curse and spit on knew the hatred in our hearts and still chose to save us. And for a moment I felt like I was there and something just clicked because I was a part of that group of people with their alcohol and slurred insults. I saw myself in the crowd of mockers, and we were all standing around the bottom of the cross spitting at the one who came to heal us.
I was literally at a loss for words, because it had been SO long since I had seen myself as a sinner who was literally so broken and hard that it could only take an act of God’s grace to heal me – yet this is who I am. This whole experience almost broke me, and yet at the same time it made me so incredibly whole.
It reminded me that in the absolute depth of my depravity the God of all the universe saw me do this, he sees me do this again and again, and he chooses to forgive, to love, to wipe away the hatred and the pain and the hardness of my heart and to pick me up when I am face down and dirty and unable to go on. And I realized my God is jealous for every one of those broken people standing out there yelling on that November night. He is jealous for me, so much so that he died for me while I still hated him.
In essence, this is the greatest lesson I have learned this year -- that even though I often find myself in places that I could chose to see my goodness, God has shown me how broken and sinful I am, how my sins nailed him to the cross and how they in themselves were the burden he carried to keep me from death. It’s a terrifying place to be, but with it I have really come to see, in the tiniest of ways, the amazing love Christ has for me. It is a love that should revolutionize my life along with every thought and moment and word of mine. Because how can I live a normal life when I have received such an incredible gift of unconditional love and forgiveness?
