I dreamed last night that I was in a coffin. I don’t know if I was dead or just in an immobilized, unresponsive state, but people were coming by, bending down to whisper secrets, memories, goodbyes. I couldn’t move or respond, but I was listening. Forced to listen and watch as everyone I had ever come into contact with approached and told me their overriding thoughts and feelings about me and my life and who I had been, how I had loved and affected them….accusers and supporters alike. I guess I was dead. And it kind of seems like I was on trial for every deed I had ever done, good or bad.
While most people had positive comments to leave behind, only a few were generally touched by my loss deep to their core, and a few obviously hated me and left vehemence and curses for me. Normally, I defend myself when accused, or at least when I feel wrongly accused, but being dead I couldn’t find any words for defense. It occurs to me that the deads’ deeds are permanent and at that point there is nothing else to be done, nothing that can be done other than what you already have done while among the living. All you can do is sit there and listen to your accusers while hoping against hope that the sum total of your deeds is enough to garner some mercy.
“Let the work I have done speak for me,” are the words pinned inside my Papa’s coffin.
There’s just one problem: no one can rightly stand up against all of his or her accusers because no one is perfect. No one except Jesus. I wonder what was going on those 3 days after He was crucified and buried. Surely accusers and accusations came to hold Him, but even death cannot overcome Truth. Truth is an impartial, perfect judge, either sending men to the grave or saving them from it. Jesus says He is the Truth and the life and the way. It seems kind of odd that Truth came to die in order for Truth to overcome the grave to rescue what Truth by virtue was compelled to condemn. It’s the truth of our actions and sin through which we condemn ourselves, but the Truth of Jesus’ perfection and conquering of death that sets us, condemned by Truth, free in Truth. But I love the way God works, I love that His ways seem kind of odd and opposite of what they are at first glance-like He says in order to live, we have to die. It seems to go against reason, the workings of God. In order to live in the Truth and the Truth within us, we have to die to what Truth rightly condemned in us.
I am increasingly concerned with my actions and how God is going to judge them on that day, not that He is unmerciful or doesn’t love me or that I won’t spend eternity with Him, but that I’m going to get to the end and wake up and realize that I am ashamed in front of the court because of my story and accounting and deeds….wholly terrified of the consequences of flippant sins, bowing down before a holy, righteous, and awe-inspiring judge. I imagine all I can do is sit there and listen to the accusers and my sentence, condemned by the absolute truth of who I am and have been, fully knowing that I deserve death for all eternity, before the Truth steps in and covers me in full because He loves me. And all I can do is lay there in stunned awe as my only hope comes through for me in Truth. In that moment your whole life comes down to one simple, irrevocable, inconceivable, unimaginable choice…Jesus.
