guilty

The past three months have left my heart a bloody mess. I have been grateful for the many luxuries we have in this country, the many conveniences and the right to speak our minds but my heart has been squeezed day in and day out by the way I live my life. I had no part in deciding where I was to be born, where I was to grow up, how much money my family did or didn't have, what education I was given but all of these were provided to me in abundance simply because I was born in this country. That is where my heart bleeds.

I've mentioned before that being in some of the materialistically, poorest times of my life, I've been the most fulfilled and truly felt the most rich. And sure there are times when I feel I'm not treated with respect, times when I feel others are rude or ungrateful toward me but it's taken me 24 years to realize I deserve every single bit of it. I've been rude, I've stolen, I've lusted and been greedy, I've coveted and committed murder in my heart. All of the above, I'm guilty. And if the consequences of guilt is death, then I'm dead.

I see the news, the people in desperate need in other countries; the atrocities in Sudan and Darfur, the child trafficking world wide and the appalling nature that we humans can even descend to. We live in a culture where we can hear of an innocent baby being molested and then we have the nerve to say morality is relative? The cold hard truth is it's in our very NATURE! We cause our own destruction with our thoughts and our selfishness. If there's nothing in it for me, then there's nothing I'll give to you. We'd kill each other for a piece of bread instead of share it and risk dying together.

My heart is yearning to bring grace to those children and people who have never seen grace. My heart grows and yet bleeds more as I see people even in this very city who've grown up in poverty and have learned to live the streets, fighting and looking over their shoulders every day.

And can you believe it? This is the country where we need lower taxes, where we need free health care, where we need to drive nicer cars and buy bigger houses. This is where we are so tired that we buy coffee every day to fill our bodies with caffeine we don't need while children are dying every four seconds from starvation around the world. We fill ourselves with pride at the accomplishments we achieve, the money we make, the things we're able to buy and we fight on and continue to achieve such results.

If it's one thing I've felt a pull at stronger than anything recently, it's to let it all go. To sell everything, to give it all away and to move to a distant place where people will appreciate grace and love. Where people appreciate clean water and a hug. And where people will actually read about the love of Jesus Christ and see the truth of the man behind the pages.

As guilty as I am, I'm deserving of no respect, no mercy and no love but I praise God each and every day that He sent His one and only son to die in place of my failures. That He knew we were destined to fail for the one who is ruler of this world has us so tight in his grasp that we can't even see the lies from truth. We're so tight in his grasp that we will sin destructively until our bodies can't take it and our spirits are starving for the affection of our creator. We'll turn our back time and time again, we'll pretend there never needed to be a beginning, we'll pretend we can create our own destiny or create our own morality and then we'll turn and administer justice by putting another man to death who lived out his own relative, moral lifestyle. And this is what we call the soon to be evolution of overman. We'll kill ourselves before we ever make it to such absurdity.

But I tell you, there is nothing truer in this world than the love of Jesus Christ. Than the love that the one true God, the creator of our intellect and entire world, showed to us as he was beaten and whipped until he was unrecognizable and then placed to be publicly crucified on a cross. The love of a God that has beaten death by the resurrection of Christ three days later. And we turn a blind selfish eye to Him and his children because of our self proclaimed righteousness. Because we are "good enough." We are "good people." But to a Holy God? There is nothing that is as dirty and as filthy as we are. And yet He loves us?

Sure some of us give money or time to the people in need. But how many of us give our life? I know I haven't. But my heart has been given to the one true God, to which all things will be reconciled and to which all men should seek repentance.

I don't want my life to be the same after knowing the truth. I won't let it be. And I pray you do the same. If you've never given a second thought to knowing who Jesus Christ is, for your own sake, take some time and find out or ask someone who knows because we are a crooked and depraved generation and we don't even see it.