LoveReign
a Love Affair with a SoveReign God
February 27th, 2023
My One Life
I John 3:1-2, ‘Consider the kind of extravagant love the Father has lavished on us—He calls us children of God! It’s true; we are His beloved children. And in the same way the world didn’t recognize Him, the world does not recognize us either. My loved ones, we have been adopted into God’s family; and we are officially His children now. The full picture of our destiny is not yet clear, but we know this much: when Jesus appears, we will be like Him because we will see Him just as He is.’
It was just another blade. It was just another cut. The skin puckered itself around the razor edge and there was that moment between the sting and the relief, the moment just as the blood spouted and then pooled and hid the sharp glint from her eyes. It seemed to be the only indicator that she still existed.
Her eyes grazed her skin, feasting on slash after slash. There was a smorgasbord before her. With every scar, she knew intimately the cause marking each occasion. There was the cut when her dad left. That was the first time, her anniversary. That one is because her best friend no longer wanted to be her best friend. That’s when that guy broke up with her. That one was on the day her little brother was killed. Those series of slices represent each cutting (no pun intended) remark her mom expressed angrily about her. That one is when she sold her soul and that was when he broke her. She’s like a scripted sculpture. Her hand shook, her knuckles white, clenched around the Exacto. Suddenly, the rush of blood spurted as if it were a fountain, spraying like a geyser. Shock hit her at once, and within moments, she knew something wasn’t right. Her stomach flopped and her head grew heavy even while she became light as a feather, floating like a magic carpet. Blackness colored every frayed edge in her mind as she met the ground which was rising up to meet her also.
~ We have all been there. That surprise announcement, an unexpected phone call, the unsuspecting person, a startling revelation, a tragic accident, the unforeseen, that sudden dread in the pit of our stomach, those words we never wanted to hear, the unknowing and the unraveling. What happens with the disappointments in the hands of an all-knowing, sovereign God? What is on the other side of the tarnished coin?
That was a handful of months ago. She still looked like a walking comic book. In fact, little would change for the rest of her life, but someday the wounds might not look so colorful and angry and raw. She had gotten over the worst obstacle, and that was resisting the urge to slice and dice herself every time a negativity interrupted her life, which was frequent. She was finding other ways to cope, other means to quash the mental battles and emotional squalls. Like talking with her new friend Jesus, worshipping Him and praising Him in the depths of her soul from where the root of the past hurts sprouted.
That one thing had gotten her; when she’d come to in the back of that ambulance and read the plaque hanging on the roof haphazardly above her. It read, ‘My one wild and precious life’. Wow! She’d felt cropped. She couldn’t feel anything really, except suddenly cut to the quick. Her fingers tingled, even her words were numb and wouldn’t come. All she could do is blink at the emergency techs working to stop her bleeding, her mother hysterically crying next to her on their bumpy ride to the clinic. She’d taken it too far. Suddenly, she knew what it was like to want to take something back, to scream at the top of her lungs, ‘I didn’t mean it! wait! Give me one more chance! Please!’ She pleaded in her being, as she read the words inscribed above: ‘My one wild and precious life’.
When she finally found her words, she whispered, ‘What does that mean?’ She had never met an angel before that day. That was also the day she met Jesus, and, at once, everything shifted. She had this one life, and it was hers and all she would ever be given. It was time to treat it as wild and precious, to protect it, to live it.
Psalm 18:19, ‘He stood me up in a wide-open field. I stood there saved; surprised to be loved.’ (MSG)
“When we feel like we are not good enough to be loved by God, we should remember that God’s love is greater than our doubts. We must silence the sounds of condemnation so we can hear the voice of God’s loving assurance and remember that He has selected us to be part of His family”. (The Voice, Bible Gateway)
