Meditations – Sheila Dougal

Learning to breath like a Christian during a pandemic

backlight backlit countryside dusk — Photo by Vlad Bagacian on Pexels.com

Honestly I’m angry. It’s 10 pm and I just made myself shut off my phone.

What I read on Twitter tonight has me writhing in anger! I see people loosing their grip on their wealth and spinning the elderly and vulnerable as worthy martyrs on behalf of the American dream.

It makes me want to puke! Puking probably won’t help anything. But learning how to breathe like a Christian during this pandemic will.

Just today I was thinking about the tension between being joyful as a Christian and lamenting. Right now I mostly want to lament. I want to be angry at the injustice and evil I see. I want to weep over the anxieties I feel. But I also feel a sense of hope, anticipation and actual joy about the redemption Jesus is working through this dark time in history.

After scrolling through tweets tonight, finding myself scowling and scrunching my shoulders, holding my breath and slamming utensils in anger, I realized I needed to stop and breathe and cast my cares on the God who defends the widow and fatherless and redeems my life.

There’s a healthy pattern in the Psalms for a practice of living with the tension between joy and sorrow, anger and hope.

The Psalms are like breathing. Breathing like a sojourner in a foreign land. Breathing like a child of God.

We exhale, “How long?” And, “Why have you forgotten?” And, “Contend, O Lord!” and we cry.

He gathers our tears and bears us up continually (Psalm 68:19).

Then we inhale, “Trust in the Lord!” And, “You are my help and my deliverer!” Breathing in the hope of his promise.

He leads us on, in that “long obedience in the same direction” (Peterson), through the valley of the shadow of death (Psalm 23), all the way home.

There is much to lament. And there is also much good to anticipate. Our Redeemer lives! And while I weep and I cannot tritely say, “Look at how happy I am because I’m a Christian, even while the world burns.” I can, weathered and worn, laugh at the days to come.

I can breathe out my complaints to the One who takes vengeance, and I can inhale his unspeakable peace.

Where the beauty of God is found: Meditation on Ecclesiastes 4:9-10

Photo by Kat Jayne on Pexels.com

Photo by freestocks.org on Pexels.com

Photo by Burst on Pexels.com

Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! -Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 ESV

Last summer, after a week long vacation with my family on the Mogollon Rim in eastern Arizona, I found myself pouting as we drove away from the beauty of Pine, Fir, Spruce, hidden lakes, quiet, sites of elk, bear and deer in the wild, and a visiting hummingbird on our cabin porch every morning. I knew we were heading back to the hot desert valley and “real” life where the everyday issues that arise from marriage, raising children, work, housekeeping, bills, friends, neighbors, family, church, etc. were going to have to be faced. My husband drove and I wallowed in pity as I stared out the car window watching the high elevation scenery give way to desert. Hot tears broke through and I found myself giving in to all my faithless thoughts. I squeaked out a prayer, “Help me Lord. I don’t want to go back.”

As I sat there crying and praying, the Holy Spirit spoke to my heart, “Sheila, you’re looking for beauty in nature and quiet, but I want you to find beauty in laying down your life for others. Relationships with others is where I’m at.

1 John 3:26 says, “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” Yes all creation is pointing us to the majesty and power and beauty of God (Psalm 19:1-2), but only in the beauty of laying down our lives for others, being the ones who help our friends up when they fall, do we find the greatest image of the majesty, power and beauty of God: Jesus! Jesus laid down his life for us (John 10:11). He is the Friend of friends. He didn’t avoid people or the messes of relationships to reach some nirvana or peaceful place alone with God. He laid down his life daily in the hard things of relationships and ultimately at the cross giving us an example. And in his resurrection, giving us the power to follow his example.

Sometimes one feels better than two because it’s less messy. But the truth is we were not made to do life alone. In the pain of relationships we have the power of Christ in us, and his love compels us (2 Corinthians 5:14) to lift each other up and walk with each other through hard things. This is the evidence in the church and in the Christian’s life that we belong to Jesus. “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:35).

Father, help me to surrender my life to you. Give me eyes to see your beauty and experience your peace not in isolating myself, but in following Jesus- laying down my life for others.

These 8 words: My beloved is mine and I am his

man and woman holding hands while walking on bridge — Photo by Scott Webb on Pexels.com

“My beloved is mine and I am his…” Song of Solomon 2:16

So the people who know these things (at least the ones I’ve heard) say the Song of Solomon is about a husband and his wife. It’s a love story. Others say its about Christ and his Church. A love story. I say yes.

These eight words:

My
beloved
is
mine
and
I
am
his

are deep calling to deep for me. Echoing waves of, “So be it!” rise from a cavernous thirst when I read them. I ache deep, longing for the fulfillment of those 8 words.

My marriage isn’t easy. I know, probably you would ask, who’s is? It’s foolish, and evidence of my self-centeredness, but sometimes I feel like my marriage is harder than the average marriage. We don’t share the same love of Christ. We have scars. And walls. And chasms of distance. Sometimes we’re close and enjoy the common grace poured out on us.

Lewis said, “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”

And I say, if I find in myself desires which this marriage can’t satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another “marriage.”

While Jesus walked here his observers and critics questioned why his disciples didn’t fast like John the Baptist’s. Jesus answered their skepticism with an allusion to an ethereal marriage:

‘And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. ‘ Matthew 9:15

But it won’t be ethereal. It will be very real.

What Solomon pictures in the love of the woman and her beloved is a oneness even the best marriages here can’t fulfill. There is a oneness, a unity, a belonging one to the other that is to be tasted of in marriage and consummated when we see Jesus- our beloved who has redeemed us and called us his own.

My beloved Jesus is mine. And I am his. And that is a truth beyond capturing in words on a blog.

‘Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out, “Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure”— for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. ‘ Revelation 19:6-8

‘”Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. ‘ Ephesians 5:31-32

Being God’s child changes everything – A meditation on 1 Peter 1:13-16

‘Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” 1 Peter 1:13-16

As you’ve probably heard, if you read the word “therefore” you should probably look at what precedes it so you can see what it’s there for.

Before verse 13 Peter breaks down the weightiness of this salvation we have received as Christians. I’ve grown tired of the phrases, “born again” and “saved”. They come with the connotation of a superficial Christiandom that says it’s #blessed and has no sobriety about what it means to be saved or born again. But Peter gets to the down and dirty of what it means to be born again and saved in a way our western evangelical selves have gotten all sterilized and plastic.

Maybe I’m cynical. Maybe it’s because I live with an unbeliever, but for me, all the Christianization of things is nauseating. If Jesus isn’t real, if he doesn’t change the way I think and give me a whole new outlook on life and new desires and affections… if he doesn’t really turn my world upside down then he’s a hoax and I’m a liar. But if I’m really born again I’ll find a whole new kind of life growing in me. And if I’m really saved, that will mean something that’s very sobering. I mean, if “saved” just means put the Christian cherry on top of my devil’s food life then fooey! That’s not saved, that’s sugar-coated. Peter doesn’t say in verses 3-12 that we’ve been sugar-coated. Jesus had things to say about people that said they were saved and evangelized others to make them “saved” when they were really rotten dead walking around in white washed tombs making walking dead in nice suites out of their converts.

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.” Matthew 23:15

Peter, the one who knows what it feels like to betray Jesus, fall under the weight of that shame and guilt and experience restoration with Jesus, talks about being born again as a radical, life changing experience Jesus does in us. Being born again we love a Savior we have never seen, even while we suffer (vs.6-8). Our affections have been radically changed. It’s like we’ve been born all over again.

And our salvation is just that… a new birth that will grow up (by God’s tremendous grace and mercy) till the day when Christ perfects us at his coming.

Salvation isn’t a ticket out of hell. It’s death to our old self, daily. And new life growing in us, daily.

This is what verse thirteen’s “therefore” is there for. I just see Peter full of expression and passion looking at us with wide eyes after showing us the scandalous wealth we’ve been given in being born anew as God’s own children, saved from the destruction our sin-rotting selves were destined for, and say, “Put your big boy and big girl pants on cause it’s war now! You’ve been utterly changed, and now for the rest of your life here you need a sober perspective. You need to stop putting your hope in people, status, wealth, achievement, health… even this life and you need to fix your eyes on that promises that you’re gonna see Jesus. And when you see him, you’re gonna be made like him. And the war will be over!”

I was born in 1974 to Bob and Verna Deane. In 1990 I was born again to God. And now as His child, I don’t go the way of Bob and Verna and all that my firstborn self had set her hopes on. All those passions I had were due to ignorance. I had no idea how good God was and so I put all my hope in things and people that are not good. As God’s child I am set apart from all that. I don’t live from a place of poverty hoping that some broken person or lying status or temporary wealth will make me satisfied and secure. I live from a place of abundance with confidence in the One who laid down his life for me and took my old passions and all the deadly fruit they bore with him to the cross.

I am holy. Because my Father is holy. And by his grace he is bearing the fruit of his holiness even in me. That’s beyond amazing.

Coming Friday!

A new series

I’ll be posting a historical-fiction short story this Friday. This first installment of Fiction Friday comes from a piece I submitted to a writing contest. It didn’t win, but it got me thinking I should try to write some fictional pieces more often. I really enjoyed it. Anyway, I’d love it if you joined, and if you’re so inclined to write a short 1500 words or less fictional short story and email it to me at awomanfound@gmail.com I’d love post your piece on one of my Fiction Friday posts.

Monday Meditations: Matthew 22:38-40

Welcome to the late night launch of Monday Meditations. I decided to start a regular series every Monday sharing thoughts I’ve been chewing on after hearing or reading a passage in the Bible for me, and for you. I’ve found when I share something I’m thinking about, particularly concerning the Bible, it sinks in deeper.

But, since it’s nearly Tuesday, I’ll make this 11:18 PM meditation short.

In Matthew 22:38-40, Jesus, answering a testy lawyer trying to trip Jesus up by asking him to pick the greatest commandment in God’s law, did not go to the 10 commandments. He went to the heart of what Moses told the people of Israel when God gave them the 10 commandments. The greatest commandment, Jesus said, is:

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

This deserves a long, not short, late night meditation. But nevertheless, I’ll sip from it’s abundance before I go to bed.

God’s laws- You shall have no other gods before me… You shall not murder… Honor your father and mother, etc.- are like low hanging fruit on an enormous tree that can only grow when a tiny mustard-seed sized gift of faith is planted in a humbled, receiving heart.

A person, like me, might say she doesn’t murder or steal or commit adultery, but she can’t say she loves the God who made her with all their heart, nor can she say she loves her neighbor as herself.

If you never murder anyone, or steal anything or commit adultery, but you don’t have faith that sees Christ as your hope for peace and relationship with God as he intended, your ability to not murder is fruit growing on the tree of knowledge of good and evil and it only leads to death. But if you have tasted and seen that the Lord is good, and you’ve been given eyes to see the beauty and worth of Christ and you love him, the fruit of loving your neighbor that produces a life perpetually pruned of self-righteousness will be life giving and reproductive.

God did not intend for us to just jump through hoops to look like we are pretty good people. He intended for us to love him and love others. Without a whole new life growing in us, we would never do that.

The first and greatest commandment and the second that is like it are impossible without God miraculously giving me faith. The faith he gave me to believe Jesus is producing a tree of righteousness in me that has all kinds of fruit of His Spirit hanging from it.

Thank you Father for giving me eyes to see Jesus for who he is and to love him. Produce the life-giving fruit of your Holy Spirit in me for your name’s sake and for my neighbor’s sake. Amen.

The needy in the American Church won’t always be forgotten: Meditation on Psalm 9

When I was pregnant I noticed everyone who was pregnant. When I had a 1969 Volkswagen bug, I noticed everyone with a classic Bug. And today, when the fire in my belly is still burning from the issue of abuse and the message Christian leaders like Paige Patterson send women, I’m noticing every message in my morning readings of scripture that speak to God’s love of justice, defense of the oppressed, and promised recompense for those in need who seem to be forgotten.

Psalm 9 is what I’m listening to this morning. Like David, I’m overflowing with thanks to Jesus for how wonderful he is. What he has done, how he lived and set an example for us, how upside-down wonderful he is compared to us who are so messed up. I see Jesus, and then I look at the church in America and Jesus’ men stand out like food lights in a very dark place. Jesus came to the people who claimed to worship God, and the didn’t recognize him as God. Jesus is still coming to the people who claim to worship him and he’s cleaning house!

Jesus is maintaining the just cause of his people who are often oppressed and shushed by people who claim Jesus but live blind to their oppressive ways. He judges his people with righteousness. He doesn’t ignore their sin. And he doesn’t condemn them for it either, he deals with it. He calls them out on it. He exposes it and gives them hope for repentance.

The needy in the American church won’t always be forgotten. And I feel like with the recent exposure of racism in the church, abuse in the church, misogyny in the church, sexual immorality in the church and how we’ve strained out the gnat and swallowed the camel in our religious-right stance, neglecting the weightier things of mercy, faithfulness and justice, Jesus is showing the needy he hasn’t forgotten them.

“For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God…” (1 Peter 4:17)

“It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons.” (Hebrews 12:7)

Jesus, you are good. And your men and women in this land are those my heart delights in! You have swept my house, exposed my sin, offered me your hand and drawn me to repentance with your kind, just, merciful and faithful dealings with me. Have your way with me Lord. Have your way with us here in the U.S. May your name be exalted in us as it should be!

Free- poem and thoughts from 1 Thessalonians 2

I’ve been thinking about 1 Thessalonians 2 a lot today.

It’s such a great telling of what the life free of the fear of man looks like as well as a blueprint for ministry, even as a mom and wife. To boldly speak the gospel amidst conflict. To be gentle, speaking not to please men, but God. Not flattering or being motivated by greed, but nurturing, like a mother. Sharing not only the gospel, but your life. Working, so as to not be a burden. Exorting, encouraging and charging, like a father.

I care way too much what people think. At least the old me does. I see this tendency in me and I also see Christ at work. Light shining on my darkness, exposing these crippling chains to the fear of man. And the more I walk with him, the more and more I see how freeing it is to follow Jesus. It is so true that if the Son sets you free, you are free indeed. He’s freeing me from the fear of man, which is a snare.

Well, that’s my short post for tonight. There’s much to say but I’m pooped. I’ve been writing more poetry lately probably because less words are speaking more.

Here’s a short poem in my tired thoughts about 1 Thessalonians 2.

Free

by Sheila Dougal

O man you love to sound worthy

As though I should feel guilty

If I do not please you

Will you leave me?

But Jesus comes

Man of Sorrows

Rejected

Healing lepers

No man can free

Like Jesus’ decree

“Come unto me”

Tis gentle, bold

Sans flattery

The one who has been

Freed by Thee

3 lessons from a seminary podcast

I did a lot of driving yesterday and today. The German Shepherd we rescued late last year was scheduled for neutering today in east Mesa, about an hour and 15 minutes of heavy traffic metropolis driving away. Driving on a six lane highway through Phoenix in 112 degree weather is not in my top 100,000 favorite things to do. But since the dog’s procedure was paid for by the previous owner at this location it was the option I chose. The first half of today I was Uber-Mom. Transporting child B to beginner saxophone practice, then child A to the high school summer conditioning program for incoming athletes and then picking up child B and enjoying a 1 hour break before taking child B to summer advanced band practice with his clarinet. That brought us up to 11 am. A quick trip to the grocery store, then to pick up child A and B from their various locations rounded out the morning.

For me, lots of driving equals lots of thinking. I talk to God, to myself, solve problems in my head, sometimes create problems in my head, and chew on various ideas and thoughts. There are a few podcasts I enjoy listening to also. This morning I listened to the For The Church podcast out of Midwestern Seminary. It was about lessons learned from the collapse of Mars Hill Church.

I’m a mom of teenage boys, a wife, a nurse… I have no theological education. I only have an associates degree in nursing. So why listen to a podcast from a seminary? I find teachings geared toward pastors and teacher and missionaries have much application to me as a mom and wife. In those roles I feel the call on my life to be a disciple-maker. And as a woman in the Christ’s global and historic church, I feel the need to listen to the leaders in my time and culture in the church. I listen to know how to pray. I listen to get sober eyes. I listen to identify truth and truth-twisting. I love the church. I love the people who, like me, peculiarly love the Savior they’ve never seen. Listening to this podcast today about the fall of Mars Hill Church I took away a couple applications for myself personally.

1) Don’t get fixed on one preacher. I should take inventory of my habits in listening to preachers. Am I at church because that preacher is there or because God’s word is being preached? Does the church have other men besides the lead preacher/teacher who preaches on occasion? Am I using “celebrity” preachers/teachers as my main “diet” of God’s word, or am I in the word myself, studying what I have heard taught?

2) Read your Bible! Often! The way God works in my life when the preacher preaches is something special. Faith does come by hearing and often that hearing is through the preaching of the word of God. But it’s the word, not the preacher that I need. If I don’t know how to get to the word myself and how to digest it and apply it to my life I’ll be immature and dependent on a preacher… which is dangerous.

3) Even when things don’t go the way we want in church, it’s still God’s church. He is working all things for good for those who love him… to conform us to the image of his Son. Even the falling apart of a huge church like Mars Hill is under his sovereign design for the good of his people and for his glory. My own experience in loosing a church I loved (which was not due to the same issues as Mars Hill) was hard. But through it, God has refined my faith and has caused me to see the church world-wide and local in her many branches as a beautiful work of Christ in which I too am a part. No one preacher or teacher or even denomination should be how I identify with Christ’s church. Paul corrected people in the Corinthian church for saying they followed Apollos, or Cephas, or Paul. I take the warning. I don’t follow any pastor or teacher. I am Christ’s and he is mine. The pastor functions in his role in the body. I function in mine. And we both worship the same Lord.

I’m looking forward to getting to know the people at Valley Life Surprise. I love the preaching of the word that happens there and the gospel centrality of everything I hear. But I pray Jesus always captivates me… no man. No preacher. And I pray I can be even a tiny part in building up His church here in Surprise, AZ.

thoughts from a Mother’s Day Sunday

Yesterday being Mother’s Day, me being a mom and a having a mom and knowing moms and women who long to be moms and/or grieve the loss of their children, it was a day full of thoughts turned prayers.

Yesterday also being the last Sunday in a series on marriage at my church, and me being married and knowing firsthand the unique kinds of trials marriage brings, it was a day of reflection turned worship.

About a week ago I read Psalm 27 and it grabbed me. I’ve been mulling it over ever since. One particular verse has me thinking about my one thing.

One thing have I asked of the Lord,
that will I seek after:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord
and to inquire in his temple.

What’s the one thing I am asking God for and seeking after? One thing. Mostly its been for my marriage. Or my kids. The two things yesterday hit on. When I read Psalm 27 I hear the writer exclaiming that in the midst of fearful troubles and rejections, his one thing was a triune request: To be in God’s presence all his life, to see the beauty of God and to be able to talk with God and may requests of him. If I’m honest at first reading I feel like that’s just out of reach. How can I say my one thing is all about God when my kids are struggling and I’m exhausted and my marriage is so troubled? How could the Psalmist say this when danger and fears and rejection by his own parents surrounded him?

As I listened yesterday to the preaching of the message that God has ransomed us from slavery to sin and idolatry, like Hosea ransomed Gomer, the mental image of the Son of God crying out, “I buy you back! I buy you with my own life!” while I was shamefully sold-out to sin flashed through my mind. I heard 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”

And then Psalm 27 started making more sense. There’s only one thing I really need in the midst of fears and suffering: Christ. If he didn’t buy me back to God I would never be able to run to him as a refuge. I wouldn’t be able be in his presence daily or see his endless beauty or talk with him and seek his answer.

In the midst of parenting trials and marriage troubles, where fears and the pain of betrayal and rejection and sins threaten to destroy, the one thing I need more than anything is Christ. And when I lift my eyes off this storm around me and believe the promise that he his with me, and dwell on the beauty of his glory, and seek his face and his counsel, everything is set right. The storm may rage, but with the psalmist I can say:

I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living!
Wait for the Lord;
be strong, and let your heart take courage;
wait for the Lord!

A slow-to-believe believer’s thoughts on Good Friday

It’s Good Friday.

There’s a tsunami of meaning in those three words.

Maybe for you it’s just TGIF.

I get it. Honestly, I grew up hearing the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection, but for years it made no connection with my soul. If I’m honest the celebration (if you can call it that) of Good Friday has been odd to me at best and often it’s been an offense. Tim Keller said something I heard the other day to the effect of, “The cross of Christ is offensive in all sorts of ways, and if you haven’t felt it, if you haven’t ever struggled with it, I don’t think you get it...” That has been the case with me. Until recent years, I haven’t really stopped to face the ugliness and offense at the center of the Christian message: that Christ was crucified for our sins.

Years of questioning from dear loved ones who don’t believe has caused me to look that horrific, bloody, crucified, historic Jesus I love in the face and wrestle with the offense of the Christian doctrine of substitutionary atonement (Christ dying in our place for our sins).

I am a believer. But I understand unbelief. Unbelievers I love have caused me to examine what it is I say I believe on holidays like Christmas and Easter and Good Friday. And I’m very glad they have. I’m a slow-to-believe believer in Christ. The wonder and horror of what Christ endured and did for me, specifically, and for all who would believe in him, is palpably meaningful to me now more than ever. But I’m thick-headed and slow to get it. I’m sure the meaning of Christ’s substitutionary death will increasingly become more real for me since it is infinitely full of truth and life. Increasingly, substitutionary atonement is no longer two big, seminary-graduate words only to be heard from a pulpit. Substitutionary atonement is the bloody door through which I enter an eternity of grace upon undeserved grace!

But I digress.

I want to try to explain at least a cupful of my thoughts regarding Good Friday as I stand under the Niagra Falls of Christ’s substitutionary death for those who believe in him.

There is much to capture in thinking on what it means that Christ died in my place and satisfied the just requirement of God for me so that I will never experience rejection from the God who made me to know him as Father and friend. As I say, It’s like trying to stand under Niagra Falls with a tiny tea cup to grab a drink of water. But here I go.

It’s Offensive Because We’re Evil

Good Friday is about how we have perverted the glory of God and how he makes his glory known rightly again.

The thought that people are basically good and if we just modify “bad” behaviors we would all be happy and the world would be a better place is lost on me. I’ve had a 2 year old. I’ve lied so I could look good to another liar. I’ve been abandoned and objectified as a woman. And I’ve watched the news and cared for people broken by the evil in others.

We modify “bad” behaviors not because we’re basically good, but because like Imagine Dragons said, “No matter what we breed, we still are made of greed.” If we’re honest, we know inside us is a drive to make ourselves the center of life at the expense of others. It’s an insidious evil that seems to lie dormant, but peeks out it’s ugly head and beats its little brother so it can have the ball, or abandons it’s family so it can have a better life… or a thousand other birthed-evils that come out of our hearts. We have laws, and behavior modification techniques and self-help books, and therapists and jails and multiple forms of restraint and training in our lives because we are trying to tame the beast. Not because we’re all angels at heart that trip up every now and then.

And all the horror that comes out of us is not just horrible because of what we do to each other. It’s horrible because we were not random, chance products of evolutionary process. If that’s all we are then there would be no reason to call anything we do right or wrong. It would be simply part of the process of evolution: survival of the fittest. But we know we do evil things and we recognize evil in others because we are made to do good. To be good. To be godly. To reflect the glory of God in our lives like living testimonies to the universe and each other. Our human lives are to be like works of art that display the beauty and wonder of the One who made us. The evil in us is so evil because is a perversion of the image of God in us.

When I look at the cross of Christ and the horrors of his crucifixion and think about the why behind it- Why would God do that to save us? I realize, at least in part, that the reason the cross of Christ is so offensive and horrific is because billions of people (including me) have perverted the glory of God with our lives and made God out to be a liar and a murderer and a self-centered leech with a message that says, “Your life for mine!” The cross of Christ is justice. It’s a making right the message that has been wrongly proclaimed from sinful humanity. The cross of Christ says God is worth my life. God is truth. God is just. God is life. God gives life. God’s message is, “My life for yours!” The cross of Christ is a historical entrance of God into humanity saying, “This is what you all have done to me. This is the bloody truth about the evil that is in you that perverts the truth about who I am and who you are. I am bloodied and broken and bruised by your evils. You were made to glorify me, but you have defamed me. And I bear it because I am God and I give my life for you!“

On the cross Christ is taking the truth that, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” in his own body. His bloody, broken flesh on that cross is the embodiment of our perversion of God’s glory. He became our sin.

I know that’s not all the cross of Christ says. But it’s a few drops. It’s enough to cause me to hate my sin and love my sin-bearing Savior.

All Real Love Is Substitutionary Sacrifice

Good Friday is about what love really is and what only God can do.

In that same talk, where I heard Tim Keller say that if we haven’t really struggled with the offense of the cross of Christ we probably don’t really get what it means, I also heard him say something that captured a few more drops of the cascades of truth pouring from the side of my pierced and broken Lord. He said, “All love. All real love is a substitutionary sacrifice. ‘My life for yours’. Heart of the universe...” It’s true. It’s a truth we can all recognize. We all know it when we see substitutionary sacrifice. When a parent gives up their agenda for the day to tend to a child in need. When a soldier dies to keep an enemy from taking freedom and life from another. When a firefighter rushes into a burning building to rescue a trapped man. All of these and so many other examples speak of the universal truth that real love is “My life for yours. I’ll die, I’ll sacrifice, I’ll serve to make your life better, easier, richer.” Evil is, “Your life for mine. How can you die, how can you sacrifice, how can you serve to make my life better, easier, richer?”

But even though we see this truth in our lives, none of our little displays of the true message substitutionary sacrificial love can save our fellow man from the righteous judgement of God on the evil we all carry around inside.

There’s a line in an ancient Hebrew Psalm in the Bible that says, “Truly no man can ransom another or give to God the price of his life, for the ransom of their life is costly and can never suffice, that he should live on forever and never see the pit.” (Psalm 49:7-9)

It’s the truth. We all display little imperfect examples of the universal truth of substitutionary sacrifice, but none of us can be an atoning substitute for another human being. The only person who could ever pay the costly ransom required to love an evil human being and give them a life that lives forever in friendship and intimate relationship with God is God. I might die a little so that my son can live more. But only the God-Man Christ Jesus can die so that my son can live forever!

So there’s my little tea cup of truth. It’s just a drop from a fountain that flows abundantly with truth and life. Christ died bearing the evil I have lived out which has perverted the truth about God. And Christ did this for me because only he can give God’s life for mine so that I might live forever!

Maybe this Good Friday you can sip and taste with me and see that the Jesus who died so horrifically for our sins this day in history about 2000 years ago, he is good.