When It's You

On my way to see a dear friend I hadn't seen in ages, I became the ones they talk about in the Word who love their wealth,

preached about as if they are not sitting right there in churches, nodding their heads thinking That could not be me.

As if they are not the ones who volunteer here and donate this there.

As if they are not the ones who spend free time studying the Word.

As if they are not the ones going to a Christian university in just three days, with aspirations to go on missions, to be like Christ and to love like Christ and to serve like Christ.

You know, the ones who are satisfied with their wealth, who are

"doomed to die like sheep, and Death will be their shepherd." -Psalm 49:14a

Yes, that was me for a moment there. 

 


Sitting on the train, reading my Bible on the way to Boston, a woman with the saddest face and the most starved frame and most abused soul entered the train.

"Excuse me, everybody," her voice dragged out the words as if it hurt to speak,

"I hate to be a bother, but my brother died last week and his funeral is in New Jersey on Monday, and I am just $14 short of the ticket cost, and I got mugged on Monday, and I'm pretty desperate."

Silence and stares packed the train so much I imagined it would explode with the tension.

And with an open Bible in my lap, I sat there just like anybody else, staring. 

Some folks even stared at me to see what I would do, the girl who had the nerve to crack open a Bible in public.

And still I sat there, closed my book, and wrestled thoughts endless, tormenting.

Of course the notion of offering her my last $20 bill came to mind. And of course the skeptic's caution echoed It's a scam. She's obviously a drug addict. Don't waste your money.

And like a breeze that had rolled in and out, she was gone at the next stop to try her luck on another train.

But the stillness of the realization of what had just happened was stagnant and suffocating within me.

I cherished the $20 bill in my purse more than the possibility that this woman was telling the truth. I denied her a moment that sure, she could have used and abused, but who knows what God could do when one gives.

After all, hadn't I just read, claimed to believe and absorb and know a promise true?

"He will always make you rich enough to be generous at all times, so that many will thank God for your gifts which they receive for us."
-2 Corinthians 9:10

Feeling awful, I could not shake it until the next morning. Because grace was left out of the equation. Grace came to remind, came to save, to reprimand, teach and raise higher the daughter of a king who tripped in the dirt and tore her fine robes and felt like the farthest thing from one who gets to be saved.

But, nonetheless, I am still saved and being sanctified and living in lavish blessings from a God whose love in truly unconditional. 

He wrote words that these eyes took in and were strangely comforted by:

"A person can never redeem himself; he cannot pay God the price for his life. because the payment for a human life is too great. What he could pay would never be enough to keep him from the grave, to let him live forever."
-Psalm 49:7-9

Ah, yes.

None of my good works, none of my generosity, none of my efforts out of guilt, or duty, or the filth that is my brand of righteousness, could ever keep me from the grave, could ever redeem, could ever undo these sins and make lovely out of them. Not even what those who read my words here on this blog may think of me after reading how I denied one who may have needed, how I was so blatantly un-Christ-like.

But this is the Good News springing up from the ashes of my imminent failure.

The Good News is not that I did the right thing. Because I didn't.
The Good News is not that I represented Christ well. Because I didn't.
The Good News is not that my motives were pure. Because they weren't.
The Good News is not that I will always do the right thing for the rest of my life. Because I won't.

The Good News is my price has already been paid and a Savior does live in me, and He does forgive and He is meticulously working on this sinner's soul and that it's not up to me, or what I do.

Furthermore, the Good News is that denial of that $20 bill, that moment in my heart where I had a selfish motive victorious over a giving heart, where sin really revealed it's nasty face,

it's dead.

But Christ in me is risen and has the victory.