Come out of Hiding. (Sunday Thoughts Link Up #65)
ROMANS 5:6-8
6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
We are well on our way towards Easter. The resurrection is drawing near and with it all the celebration of our salvation and a life renewed and extended into infinity.
But as the daffodils start to topple over and the tulips push on through, I cannot help but also feel the weight of what I did, and still do, to put Jesus on the cross. I sing in church of amazing grace and then tail the Buick in front of me all the way home because we’ve still got clothes to change and lunches to make and laundry to fold before nap, and my feet hurt from these heels, and I’ve had to go to the bathroom since 9 a.m. but didn’t want to hold up the whole exodus home. And the Buick in front of me is driven by a nice old lady from my church. This is just a tiny example, not the big sins, the unhealable wounds that I keep picking at and opening up ad nauseam.
We all of us have our thorns, which Paul rightly understood. But what gets me is this idea that Jesus loved me before and in spite of all the relapses into the same crusty sins. In my most secret heart, I fear it’s not true. That He’s mistaken me for someone else. That if He really knew me He’d take it all back.
There’s a scene in the show, “This is Us,” when Rebecca, the wife, seeks out her husband, Jack, to apologize. There’s been misunderstandings on both parts. He is holding open the door and she is holding out her hand to welcome him back into her life. It is a threshold moment. If you’re home on the couch watching, you’re already tearing up. She talks about acceptance and forgiveness and she’s ready to move on…
But he interrupts her.
He says, “You don’t know everything about me…I have a problem, Rebecca. And I have hidden it from you for a very long time. I need to get a handle on it before I can walk back into the house. I’m very embarrassed. And I am very sorry. But I need to fix this on my own.”
And he shuts the door in her face.
The scene fades to black.
This is it. This is how I picture the moment in which I confess every sin, every lingering thought, all the dark undersides of me. We all desperately want to be known and loved, but at the same time not, because if anyone ever knew us, really knew us, there’s no way we could be loved like we need to be.
Just when you are wadding up the tissue and picking up the remote to turn off the tv and call it a night, you hear a knock, and the scene appears once more.
It’s Rebecca. She’s still there on the doorstep.
And she says,“Get in the car. You are my husband and I am your wife, and if you have a problem we will fix it together. I need you to get in the car so we can go home.”
It’s the darkest moment made light again. It is total exposure and total acceptance. It is biblical, almost. Our truth is even better, because God does not help us “fix it together”, He sends Jesus to do it for us and then He sends His Holy Spirit to be the spark that makes us want to stop hiding.
We are all Adam and Eve hiding in the garden. If left to our own devices, we would never really let ourselves be known. And this is what brings me back to the hope of Easter. God will always find me. He will always seek me out. He will always know the worst of me and still give my spirit respite and my weary mind pause. He loves me that much.
In the words of Zora Neale Hurston,
“Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.”
I can’t think of a better way to welcome Easter…all of us crawling out of our hiding places and into the arms of God.
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A big thank you from Jamie on The Mom Gene!
