NOT GUILTY!
the Saving GRACE of God’s Redeeming LOVE
April 5th, 2023
Through a Looking-Glass
Ecclesiastes 3:11b, ‘He has set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.’ (NIV)
For years, I imagined God scratching His head and rubbing His chin when He looked at me, hoping to hide the confusion of what He saw. I would catch Him with this far-off, wistful gleam in His eye, picturing who He had thought He made when He created me. All the dashed hopes and dreams like water in a mountain stream, burbling away. I wondered if He ever regretted making me; I was kind of sure He did. In fact, sometimes when I really thought about it too long and hard, I was certain He might just kill me off like a bad actor in a film that had reached her demise, just so I didn’t continue to be such a disappointment, such a stumbling block to others. I couldn’t imagine any good thing ever coming from me, even though I carried myself like I was all that. Look up the word hypocrite and I imagined my face was penciled in.
What a shock it was when I first heard the concept, there is nothing that surprises our God. Nothing catches Him off guard, nor disappoints Him, nor worries Him. There is not one thing He isn’t prepared for, unable to handle. All those years, I considered Him wringing His hands in grave consternation over me, wondering where He had gone wrong, what He could have done differently to make me turn out more like what He had anticipated and hoped for. To learn He wasn’t shocked at all about who I had become and the time I had wasted—well, it was life-changing and eye-opening.
What that means is, our God, Who created us from dust and a dream, doesn’t carve us from a stone, nor make us from a mold, that is unyielding. He designed us with the gift of choice, and then set eternity in our hearts, for us to pursue. I think He made us with the perfect God-sized, God-shaped hole inside each one of us, for He, Himself, someday to fit right into. We live our lives unaware of why the vast emptiness in our souls, until we finally find Him again, while running toward home down a dusty road with a lump in our throats and a hurt in our chests, rehearsing the speech we’ll give when we arrive. There’s a certain amount of waywardness and searching in every being, just looking for God, trying to find our way home.
Yes, I believe He looks at each one of us through His lens which sees us becoming all He created us to be, all He purposed. But He alone knows what it will take and the time needed to bring our calling to fruition. He is patient, kind, long-suffering, as He waits for the wreckage our lives sometimes become. For us to come through the messiness, the dross, the burnt ash, and out into the light once more.
God’s Loving Kindness Leads Me to Repentance
