I did not expect that this revelation that came surging through a softened spirit, touched by an air of "it's all gonna be ok," and warmed golden by the smiles of my newest Christian friends,
beautiful young women whose Christ-light I wanted a piece of for myself, shining bright as their ships descend and rise on the waves of this life on their journey to the Kingdom.
It was a story I had heard before. Literally, I had seen the exact skit that the admissions team presented to us when I had brought some Youth to Snow Camps just weeks before.
It was two slabs of wood, tied together. That's what did it.
A man, his character telling the story of a coming crucifixion that everyone was talking about in an ancient world thousands of years before I was born.
A scene set where some teacher named Jesus would be demoralized and humiliated before all for no crime and all sins.
That's what brought tears rolling slow down the cheek, purest tears my eyes had ever cried because they were tinged with the blood of a Savior.
How many times had I heard the story?
the story of the man named Jesus who was the Truth that all doubted, the pure that everyone made filthy, the blameless that everyone demanded to be whipped and bloody, suffocated and shivering naked on splinters that would be the ossification of my life.
The awful repetition made me senseless.
But on that day, amidst worries of dollar signs and college tuition and loans and careers and futures, God reminded me with something I hear every day.
Again, I say, Christ crucified. For me! A filthy sinner! The wage of sin and death has been paid, eradicated from my debts, and replaced with a glorious gift.
Would this not make me shout with joy with every telling of this Truth?
Would this not make me cry shaking?
Wouldn't my feet itch to dance and my soul feel power-washed with grace and more grace like there was nothing to do but sing praise?
Tears rolling down from a story I'd heard over and over, a cyclical forgetting, a conditioned taking for granted.
And God said through my private crying, the miracle lives within every day, anew.
It's still as dramatically true as it was then, and always will be.
A new life.
God gives me new life in the repetition of His Word, His story, His life. The over and over is a chance for renewed grace that I'd mistaken for a routine.
This morning, on a desk lit by a flickering candle, in my alone time with the love of my life, a Bible opened to a chapter I'd read and repeated until it was no more but nice words on a page: Romans 8, one of the passages that my nurse Ana had written on a napkin the night that God saved my life from the sting of death and the chains of anorexia. I read the words each day.
But today I saw them fresh.
How nothing separated the love of Christ from me. How victory is mine through Him and His Spirit in me.
Let it sink. Read it four times more. Smile without ceasing, tears well up again. What've I become?
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