‘In his cross, Jesus glorified God and the Father glorified him. In the hour of the cross, Father and Son displayed their mutual glory.
At the end of ages, when we at last receive permission to pull back the tent curtain to peer at the glory, the scene that will greet us will not be what we expect. Enthroned above the cherubim is a mangled man hanging from a Roman cross. That, John assures us, is the radiant beauty of God.’
One of the things that I struggle most with is not feeling busy enough. I try not to mention it to other people too often since it’s a) not a common struggle and b) one that people actually want to have. But for me it’s a struggle. One of the biggest problems is that I’m usually teetering along the edge on the chasm called Morbid Introspection and when I don’t have enough to do, I fall in. Some people like to poke around in other people’s dirty linen. I like to hang my own out, have a look at it, stress over it and then put it away without washing it. And I don’t have to tell you that this is not healthy .
For me, it’s fairly easy to see the sins in my own life but very hard to deal with them. I just sit and look at the big pile of sins in front of me and get all sad about how horrible I am, depressed about how I’ll never be worth anything and then get distracted by something else and forget for a bit before I walk into the big pile again and it starts over.
Part of this is a self-worth thing. Not that I need a good opinion of myself but I’ve obviously forgotten God’s opinion of me. That’s a really stupid thing to do. Yes, I’m horrible, no, I’ll never amount to anything by myself but Jesus is amazing and I’ll amount to something through him. That’s what counts.
Grace really does save my daily life. Imagine just how awful it would be if there was no antidote to my periods of Morbid Introspection. I’d be stuck thinking about myself forever. But instead I get to think about Jesus. And know that because of him I don’t need to stress about my pile of sins. He’s pretty good at clearing things up around here.
I know, I know. I’m a young girl who’s been married for all of 5 months and I have zero children and therefore know nothing about parenting. If that’s what you’re thinking, you’ve almost got it. I certainly don’t claim to know much about being a parent. But I know an awful lot about not being one. I’ve had 22 years experience. 6 of those have been in the knowledge that in all likelihood I’ll never know about being a parent from first hand experience. And, to be honest, that stinks. I’m not talking about a little bad smell here. I’m talking gut-twisting stink. Since I was 16 I’ve had to face up to the fact that I’ll probably never hold my own child, never hear anyone call me Mummy, never be able to make my husband a Dad, never get to use the list of favourite baby names I’ve had stored up for years and all the rest.
1 Samuel 6 – The Philistines are struck down with plagues after capturing the ark of the LORD. They can’t deal with it so send the ark to Beth-Shemesh. This is a Levitical town and so these folks should really know what to do and not do with the ark. But they don’t: vs 19 – ‘And [God] struck some of the men of Beth-Shemesh, because they looked upon the ark of the LORD.’
It’s a simple enough rule: don’t look into the ark of the LORD. In those days, to look at the mercy seat was to ensure death. Now to look at the mercy seat (Jesus) ensures life. It’s a simple enough rule.
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