Don't you hate it when you have a word "on the tip of your tongue", to use an overused cliche? You know how it is, the next word, the RIGHT word, right THERE, but just when your fingertip (er, tongue-tip) brushes against it, it skitters away and disappears?As I write this, I've got a brilliant forum-post reply half written in another Window. I'm on a roll, see; I know exactly what I want to say, and WHAM! I slam into an invisible force field that separates me from the perfect word.
My muse makes suggestions. "Valuable?"
"No. Close, but that's not it."
"Purposeful?"
"Nooo...something like that tho."
We both drum our mental fingers on a virtual table.
GREATNESS!
"NO! That's not even close. [sigh] Time to consult thesaurus.com."
It occurs to me that obedience is like this sometimes.
There I am, see, doing great things, spending lots of time with my Father, "praying without ceasing", living in constant worship, when a barrier is thrown up and suddenly that next act of obedience is just within my grasp...but ungraspable. It's RIGHT there! But no matter how hard I try, I can't reach it. I can't attain it.
Our Father knows this about me. He's always known it, even before I existed. Yet he Loves me. He calls me his daughter, His beloved, His chosen.
He loves me so much, and so wanted to be able to call me His own, that He died for me.
He said, "I will be your God, and you will be my people." He left the throne of Heaven, became a flesh-and-blood Man. He willingly emptied Himself of His divinity. His God-ness.
This Man, Jesus, He was innocent. He was sinless.
Yet He was punished, for me. Because My Father knew I would never be able to obey perfectly.
But Jesus could. And Jesus did.
And then Jesus suffered for me.
He was tortured, persecuted, spat on, and laughed at.
He was executed, even tho he wasn't convicted of a crime.
For me!
And for YOU, too!
God's love is perfect.
Do you know this Love? Please contact me, or a near-by church, if you don't.
"For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, so that EVERYONE who believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal Life."
John 3:16 (New Living Translation)
(And I'm still trying to think of that word. :-D)
"God rewrote the text of my life when I opened the book of my heart to his eyes."
Psalm 18:24 (Msg)
