risen
Having a hope in my heart that my life is in the hands of the creator of this Earth is pretty amazing. Just so there’s no confusion, they’re the same hands that have measured the oceans with his cupped hands, and also the same hands that have marked off the stars with a handspan. It’s in Isaiah 40; it’s pretty cool.
The only reason I’m so blessed as to have my life in such awesome hands is all because of this weekend.
On my own, I’m not good enough to know God. I stuff up; I’m selfish; I’m evil… all these things that a perfect God hates. But cos He didn’t want all of us to be separated from Him, He sent Jesus into the world, to be born as and to live as a normal human being, to then carry all the things that I’ve ever done wrong, now and into the future, on his shoulders, and to be punished for it… instead of me.
So humbling.
Christ didn’t, and doesn’t, wait for us to get ready. He presented himself for this sacrificial death when we were far too weak and rebellious to do anything to get ourselves ready. And even if we hadn’t been so weak, we wouldn’t have known what to do anyway. We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him.
Now that we are set right with God by means of this sacrificial death, the consummate blood sacrifice, there is no longer a question of being at odds with God in any way. If, when we were at our worst, we were put on friendly terms with God by the sacrificial death of his Son, now that we’re at our best, just think of how our lives will expand and deepen by means of his resurrection life! Now that we have actually received this amazing friendship with God, we are no longer content to simply say it in plodding prose. We sing and shout our praises to God through Jesus, the Messiah!
[Romans 5:6-11 - The Message]