Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Is this what it feels like?

Bright lights on brand new eyes and a first gasp of breath. Unfamiliarity whirrs by the tiny newborn baby with the reddish skin and big round eyes as he is passed from rubber gloved hands back to his only companion for the last nine months. He can’t see her very well but can feel her arms comfort and soothe and he knows her voice so well already. In his first moment of life, lungs still unaccustomed to breathing, he wonders to himself for the first time, “Is this what love feels like?”
Everything was fun until he tripped over that rock. Laughing and running on a summer day it came out of nowhere and now the three year old giggling boy had a hole in his jeans and warm blood running down his knee. Oh but Daddy is here, picking him up and holding him close. Daddy is always there when he needs him. Amidst intermittent sobs, the boy thinks to himself from the arms of his father that this is what love must feel like.
She makes fun of him at school because she doesn’t want anyone to know. A big heart drawn in bright red crayon on a sheet of notebook paper folded over eight times was sent across the room in secret. The boy with the blonde hair opens the note, looks up at her, and smiles. Her cheeks turn rosy red and she tells all her friends that this is what love feels like.
He used to love playing baseball, he really did, but now it is not so fun. When daddy said he would be his coach he thought everything was going to be great and that he would finally get to see him but he didn’t know how much daddy like to yell. It wasn’t his fault, honestly, nobody could have hit that pitch. That didn’t stop his coach from screaming his name loud enough for everyone to hear and calling him a girl. “I guess this is what love feels like” the player muttered to himself as he slumped back to the dugout throwing his red cap into the dust below his cleats.
Everyone’s bodies are changing, and some are getting more attention than others. It didn’t take long for the pre-teen girl to realize that the guys in her class seemed to like her more when she wore that particular red shirt with those particular shorts. Looking in the mirror in her bedroom she realized that by just showing a little bit more, she could really know what love felt like.
Her head buried under a pillow drowning out her screaming parents downstairs, she realized that she is never too old to cry. One last slamming of the door and it is all over as her eyes turn red from tears. Now she lives in two different houses but neither of them feel like home and she has convinced herself that all of it was her fault and that’s just how love actually feels.
Drenched in sweat his teammates lift him onto their shoulders and the crowd goes crazy. That was his name they were screaming, and just because of a lucky catch for a lucky win. He could already picture his bright red jersey displayed in the trophy rack of his high school and smiled because now he felt good enough to know what love felt like.
No girl had ever let him go this far before, this time must be the real thing. The lights were dimmed and the movie was over but she was still there with her big red lips inviting him closer. One hand sliding up further than it ever slid before and a quick decision and they were off. He woke up the next morning ready to tell the guys in the locker room all about what love felt like.
He was a really great guy, she couldn’t afford to lose him. No other guy looked at her the way he did and now was the time to show him that she really loved him. One momentary lapse of reason and the red ribbon in her hair was pulled out and everything started moving in a blur. She got caught in the moment that she wished would last a lifetime but faded away the next day when she never saw him again. If this is what love felt like she didn’t want anything to do with it.
School was impossible and the parents just didn’t understand, but thankfully he had his friends. Playing video games downstairs it all started innocent until one guy reached into his pocket. So small and insignificant, but everyone wanted to try it. A couple puffs each and everyone was having a good time telling jokes and laughing with red eyes. This was where he could escape and be with people who actually understood him. He had never felt love anywhere else so he guessed that this is what it must feel like.
Hardly recognizable as human, the man hung bloodied and beaten and on display for the world to see. His body was red with stained blood and open flesh as the nails piercing his hands suspended him against a wooden cross. Insults and saliva flew toward him without relief but he didn’t say a word. He knew that sometimes love had to feel like this. He also knew that soon He would be able to  come down from that cross and wrap His arms around His children and show them what Love really felt like. He would get to show them that the things they thought were love that hurt them so much were never love at all and the things that they experienced in life that felt like love were just a shadow of the real abundant Love He was giving them. Love kept Him up on that cross, and Love took Him off it and sent Him into our lives.

Friday, September 16, 2011

Nolo Contendere

If you are ever in the mood to feel guilty about your life, you should probably just read the first five books of the Bible.
In those books there some very long lists of sins we didn’t even know existed that we could easily blacken our consciousness' with. Didn’t know you should feel bad about cutting the hair on the side of your head? Well Leviticus 19:27 says you should be, apparently God really digs sideburns. If you read earlier in that chapter in verse 19 you will find that you are also a dirty rotten sinner for wearing clothing woven out of two different kinds of fabrics. Think you are innocent of this one? What about that T shirt you have that says it’s made of 99% cotton? What’s the other one percent? What do you have to say for yourself Mr. half-breed polyester?
Deuteronomy 22:12 tells us to make tassels to wear on the four corners of our cloak. What!? You mean to tell me that you haven’t made your own tassels and fastened them to the corners of all your cloaks? You don’t even wear a cloak? I don’t know how you expect to make it to heaven.
If reading all these laws doesn’t make you feel guilty, you should at least feel guilty about not being able to get through the book of Leviticus.
It is ridiculous to think of anyone looking for things to feel guilty for but I think we do it all the time. We walk around with huge signs on our foreheads advertising all of our failures and mistakes because we think it will explain to the world why were are what we are today. We know we aren’t good enough for God’s grace and for some reason, we keep looking through our past to find more proof that we don’t deserve it.
In Exodus we find a people plagued with guilt. God gave them the opportunity to pay for their crimes by having the priests offer sacrifices on behalf on the people. In order to do so, the priest would have to enter the Holy of Holies, the place where God Himself dwelled. The priest had to walk in with the guilt of his people and know that at any moment God literally could strike him down and that He had every right to do so. Bells were fastened to the edge of his garment and a long rope was tied around his waist just in case, should God’s wrath be so fitting, that the priest fell down dead before the Lord, the people on the other side of the curtain would hear the bells and be able to reel in the body of their priest.
The people recognized their guilt and recognized the holiness of their God and had to walk with the stains of everything they had done wrong trailing behind them into the presence of God.
There was, however, another article of priestly clothing that is generally overlooked and was ordained by God to be worn. On the turban of the priest was to be a sign made of pure gold that read “Holy to the Lord.” Try and imagine this.
The priest would walk in with the guilt of his people behind him and the full awareness that he could die for his crimes but all God would see coming towards him was this sign on his forehead that read “Holy to the Lord.”
He wasn’t looking at all that was behind him, He was looking at the sign that said that this man and the people he represented were holy- set apart and purified, and that they were good enough to walk into His presence.
We as people tend to view our lives from the lens of our past. We take all of our past experiences and put them together as the basis for our identity and expect that God does the same thing. We forget that God is bigger than our understanding of time. He gets to see our lives from the lens of our future. In His perspective, we are already standing beside Him in paradise as completed and perfected souls who’s robes have been washed clean and crowns already rewarded. He sees us how we actually are.
Who are we to see ourselves otherwise?
If you are accused of a crime, you always have one of two options. You could either plead innocent, or you could plead guilty. However, in some cases a third option is given, that is, the right to plead “Nolo Contendere.” Nolo contendere is Latin for “I do not wish to contend.” It basically means that you are accepting the punishment for the charges you are accused of but you don’t have to live the rest of your life with the word “guilty” all over your record.
I think it is time that we as Christians plead Nolo Contendere over our lives. We accept that we deserve the punishment for our crimes and that we don’t deserve the grace of God, but are refusing to walk around with guilt labeled on our foreheads. We will not let guilt be the motive for everything we do.
We will go to church because want to be with God and His people, not because we feel like we owe God.

We will share our faith with the world because we get to, not because we have to to make sure we are good Christians.
We are guilty, but that is not how we are defined.