NOT GUILTY!
the Saving GRACE of God’s Redeeming LOVE
April 3rd, 2023
My One Life
Psalm 18:19, ‘He stood me up in a wide-open field. I stood there saved, surprised to be loved!’ (MSG)
What are you and I going to do with our ‘one wild and precious life’? For many of us, we have been moving in that direction since we were small children. I’m sure we all recall being asked as a kid, ‘What are you going to be when you grow up?’ In fact, these days, it is pretty awesome, because parents on the first day of school for preschoolers or kindergarteners, have special photoshoots with their wide-eyed wee ones holding placards of what they wish to be someday. The sentiment behind it is with the intention of years down the road, at a high school or college graduation, pulling out the memorabilia and making comparisons. Now, how cool is that?!
But some of us have experienced pain and heartache with either our own choices or the choices of a loved one, perhaps even a son or daughter or grandchild, when they didn’t grow up to be who we envisioned or even they envisioned themselves to be. There is great loss and sorrow for some who thumb through the memories of yesteryear, and see the brilliant bright blue-eyed child who held so much promise, who had the world by its tail, everything at the tip of fingers amidst a smattering of applause. And then it didn’t turn out to be that way at all. It was stolen or bartered or traded for a promise that never came true. For some even, maybe they were never given the opportunity to become much.
I understand it all too well. Where I am today is not at all where I began nor where I someday thought I might be. I can say honestly now I would change very little. But it has cost a lot to get here, to this place. I sat across the desk from a waif of a girl several weeks ago. She really was just a shadow of herself. I remember being there. In fact, momentarily I got confused; I thought I was staring at the girl I once was, scolding my inner-self, the lost woman I became for a minute in time. I chewed back tears as I talked with her, trying to help her, pleading to rescue her. She’s been battling addiction for a long time, this girl has been; much longer than my fight lasted. And my heart busted for her and leaked all over. Emaciated, paranoid, starving, cold, fed up, tired, broken, so much of who she might have been robbed from her.
I told her about me. How twenty-some years ago, I was her, sitting on the other side of a desk, while a kind person tried to help me. I was barely alive, everything shallow about me then; everything a lie. And here I am today, with the great gift of sitting on this side of the desk, with the ability to offer hope and help and life. Her mouth fell open; I could tell she didn’t quite believe me. I said to her, ‘Imagine that perhaps one day it’s you sitting where I sit now, reaching out to help someone who is like you are today.’ She smiled a sad yet almost hopeful smile, a fleeting dream passing through her mind.
On the day God dreamt mankind into being, I don’t think He envisioned where we would eventually end up. I think He is much like we are with our children and grandchildren, or even ourselves: hopeful. Remember, He brought forth the first man, made from the dirt on the ground, filling the lungs with His own breath. And from a shard of the man’s rib came the first woman. The Creator and Master of the Universe snapped His fingers and blinked His eyes, and creation came into being, and land and water was birthed and formed. This God gave to mankind everything we could have ever hoped for to make the most out of our ‘one wild and precious life’. But we messed things up and have been messing things up ever since!
I wonder what God thought I might be someday when I grew up. I wonder if who I am becoming, even now, this late in life, resembles anything close to what He dreamt I would someday become. I really hope so, because—it’s finally time!—I really desire to be exactly Who He purposed and called me to be. I am so grateful that when it came time to pay my debt, He stepped forward and paid it for me, declaring me Not Guilty!
We all are given this one wild and precious life’. It’s up to us what we do with it.
God’s Loving Kindness Leads Me to Repentance
