One of the amazing things about the Bible is that if you read it long enough, eventually you will see yourself. It's not like the "Iliad" or the "Odyssey" where you will see great heroes you want to be like, a goal to aspire to. No. In the Bible you'll see yourself warts and all.
Maybe you recognize yourself in Peter's bull in a china closet sort of brash loyalty and good intentions. Perhaps it is in Thomas' doubt. For some, and I feel echoes of this in my soul as well, it is in the father's desperate cry for his child to be healed where he declares, "I believe!" and then follows it up with equally desperate honest with, "Help my unbelief". I wish that I saw myself in Lazarus' sister Mary who happily sits at the master's feet.
Unfortunately I most clearly find myself in the parable of the ungrateful servant. I reference it regularly in both real life and blog posts. Man owes the king say $500,000. He begs and pleads for forgiveness. King wipes the debt clean. Man sees a fellow servant who owes him $10 and he drags him to court to get him thrown into prison. King takes the first man, condemns him for not being grateful and showing the same kind of forgiveness the king showed him to someone who owed way less, weeping, gnashing of teeth, etc ensues. As a result, in my personal Lent reflections I've been focused on gratitude.
I'm not one of those people who was saved from a life of prostitution, drugs, etc. I am an average joe who grew up in the church, fell away for a bit but nothing major, and came back. I'm kind of a super minor prodigal son. So many people are impressed by those testimonies of being saved from massive darkness, they praise God and rejoice that someone was once saved from so much. I remember many times, hearing those testimonies and actually feeling somehow inadequate. Of course, that comes from a basic misunderstanding of the situation. If you asked those individuals with the Super Testimonies (tm) they'd be the first to tell you that they wish they had my testimony rather than walk through a personal hell.
I've mentioned it before, but the most massive revelation of the past year in my spiritual walk has been from Dr. Charles Stanley, who once said that God didn't send Jesus to save us from what we've done, the sins we've committed. God sent Jesus to save us from what we are.
We'd like to believe that we need Jesus because we at one or many points in time committed this sin, that sin, and violated the laws of God. Those sins are just the symptom, and a good physician never just treats the symptom. At our core, because of Adam and Eve's transgression in the Garden, we were fundamentally altered. That act made it so that we weren't just capable of sin, but we would inevitably sin. It is in our heart, our nature, our spiritual DNA. It doesn't excuse us, of course, but that is why we need God, need Jesus, need His Holy Spirit, because we are incapable. To say that the sins we commit are the problem is like saying that someone riddled with cancer's problem is the dramatic weight loss, hair falling out, blood in the stool, and lack of appetite. No. It's the faulty cells inside the body that are replicating the DNA incorrectly. If it was just our actions then we wouldn't need to be conformed to the image/mind of Jesus. We'd just need to be conformed to His actions, and the Pharisees, as much crap as we tend to talk about them, were already doing that. Their externals were white, the internals full of rotting flesh and dead men's bones.
That is where I find myself struggling most of the time. It isn't my externals that need altering, although there are things that are beneficial to do and not do. The issue is now and forever my internals...and that, without Jesus, is impossible to alter. I say I struggle, but really it has lately been more surrender. "I believe; Help my unbelief" resounds through my soul at the same frequent desperation as Brother Lawrence's "If You do not change me, how can I do otherwise?".
It is a hard fact that you can do nothing about it. It is a hard fact that you can do nothing about it.
I was watching my kids the other day. My daughter has been having a rough time of it lately. She's at some sort of snotty "tween" stage that just grates on my nerves. It's too early for her to be acting like I'm as much of an idiot as she thinks I am. If any other adult tells her something it is like some enlightened revelation, but if I tell her she scoffs and does it her own way. She isn't showing much respect for me or her mother and I refuse to let her treat us like that.
The thing that keeps grinding my gears is how ungrateful she is. I mean, honestly, never mind that we gave her life, but there is the food, lodging, clothing, tv, computer, education, vacations, etc. We give her so much and she snots me off? Treats me like I'm an idiot when I show her how to do something? Tell her how best to go about her life? I mean, I'm only 38 and she's 9. How much more life experience do I have? Psht...
And that's when I heard some sort of deep, bass level, spiritual bell ding in my soul. Jesus is so faithful at ringing that thing. My perspective shifted. I heard Him clear His throat and I saw my own inconsistency, my own lack of gratitude, my own insistence that God is an idiot (though I never phrase it that way when I'm about to do the thing), my own snottiness.
I felt guilty. I felt condemnation. I felt gutted by my own behavior.
Normally I would have wallowed in all of that, slipped into a spiritual depression (it's comfy there...), and been all "Woe is me", for a few days. I stepped a toe in there and then felt something different than my usual penitent slump. It was so weird. I felt loved. It was like He came up behind me, turned my face away from my actions and just hugged me, loved on me for a while. I didn't have to feel horrible. And the reason why is hard to explain, but I'll try through the medium of my parent child relationship.
My daughter we always be ungrateful on some level, because she can't know all that we have done for her. She can't know how Papa has struggled to teach her, how much Papa has prayed, and cried, and changed himself to be better for her. She can't know how much time and Papa has spent just doing the laundry, dishes, bathroom scrubbing, floor scrubbing, cooking, etc all for her. There is no way for her to comprehend how much her Mama works and struggles to provide good things for her. Even when she has her own children and does the same for them she will only have an inkling of an idea because we'll be 20 years ahead.
We are ungrateful and always be ungrateful on some level because of the magnitude of what Jesus has done for us, for what the Father has done for us, and what the Holy Spirit has done for us. He has spent many thousands of years from the foundation of the Earth and untold years before the foundation of the Earth doing for us. When I think of that I get the same feeling I imagine I would have scuba diving and a blue whale swam up next to me. Fear. Not a fear for my life, but that natural fear and respect for something so massive we barely register on it's scale. It is just so huge. We can't comprehend it now and I doubt we'll be able to comprehend it on the other side, not fully.
He deserves so much more gratitude, so much more praise, so much more of my life because of what He has done. And every time I meditate on that I feel something like Him replying with a smile, "I know. Hey, let's go for a walk."
From the Garden, to Enoch, to us...His desire hasn't much changed, has it?
Pax,
W
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