I’ve been thinking a lot lately of sin. Sins of my past. The times I struggled with lust. The times I’ve chosen food as a comfort over God. The times I have spent my earnings on clothes, food and movies and left none for God. I try so much to point my finger at talk about the person who smokes this, gossips about that, idolizes him and cheats on her. But at night, when all is said and done, the finger weakly turns back to me.
I’ve learned a lot in the past few months on life, love and grace, but the thing that I have grown the most in is application, taking what I have read or heard and examining it and applying it to myself. Me. Not focusing on others. Not waiting for them to stumble so I can be all “Look God, I’m better than them! I’m not that bad of a sinner!” Rather than waiting to pounce of the next sin victim for my pleasure, I am instead finding myself running to their side and whispering. I know how it feels. I am with you. I want to fight with you. God did the same to me, he rocked me to sleep, brushed the hair on my head as I cried and whispered truth into my ears when people were screaming lies.
The other day there was a moment when I just wanted to hold someone close and rock them and tell them everything was going to be okay. As they mourned adandonment, lost childhood and lies they had believed for so many years, I saw myself. Just a measly five months ago I was grieving some of the very same things this person was now releasing to The Lord. In my mind I saw a picture of God as my father and me as a little boy. He held me and looked down at me and I, only the age of a toddler, laughed and reached my little hands up to touch his face. I wanted so badly for the person I was now praying fiercly for to see the same image God had shown me.
I’ll admit I am no Mother Theresa or Martin Luther King Jr., but I can promise you this. I will come beside you as an equal, a sinner, a saint, a child of God. I will weep with you, laugh with you, listen to you. Why? Because Christ did this for me. He did this for all those he touched during his time here on earth and he continues to do it now centuries after he broke the power of sin on the cross. If he can love a person as greedy, selfish, lustful, hateful, slothful and prideful as I, how could he not lot the prostitutes, lady boys, homosexuals, slanderers, addicts, gluttonists just as much? We are the same. All in need of the love of a Savior. The only thing that seperates us from healing is saying yes to healing. Yes to hope. Yes to redemption. Yes to justice. Yes to a Savior. Yes to Jesus. Yes to Emmanuel.
How can you not then throw your stones to the side and stoop down to the hurting and comfort them? You were once there when people were ready to cast the first stone. But someone showed you love and everything changed.
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