Thoughts about Death, and Wrecked Seeds of Life

Am I not Judas? Am I not Peter? That look Jesus gave Peter, the one after the third crow, don’t I deserve that look?
But because the curtain is gone, ripped open to allow access, I am not condemned.
I should crawl to the Father. If I spend a mere few seconds examining this black heart, I know what I deserve.
And that is where I find myself these days. In a conflict over the grace I am freely given, and the weight of my sinfulness, and how Paul’s words can’t stop flowing through my mind.
I am a hermit crab, and this shell I have makes me itch and hurt. I am longing for a new shell, but death is the only way out. A beautiful, but difficult, sweetly surrendered death to self. Death to all my wants and wishes. To accept completely what Christ accomplished I have to say “no” to me, and “yes” to Him.
Where does a sinful misfit, clothed in a failing shell, in a world of raw beauty marred by black, find any peace?

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us.  You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 

~Romans 5:1-6

One of my very best friends sat in the hospital this whole week. One night, she was within seconds of death, a whisper really. I am twelve hours away, and it’s killing me.
“Could you send me some verses? Anything.”
I feel so inadequate to try to help with her pain. My eyes scan the pages, and I keep coming back to the Psalms. My fingers shake as I text, and I feel the surge in my heart. I am at peace, I know God has her, saved her, and will heal her. We both know, we’ve talked about it - true healing may not be in this world.
Christ’s victory is her hope. With a long journey ahead of her, I see how my perspective should be changing.
There is so much beauty in her pain. It’s been years of struggle, near death several times. She wouldn’t be who she is now without a transforming God, hope in something better.
Jesus shows us, the perfect example, of how to find your life.

“No plant ever came from anything but a wrecked seed.”

…

“The whole explanation of the apparent wreckage of the world or of our personal lives is set forth here. We can understand how our good God can permit the existence of sorrow and wrong in the world He has created and in the lives of the human beings He loves: It is His goodness that compels Him to permit it. For He knows that only through such apparent wreckage can the fruition of His glorious purpose for us come to pass. And we whose hearts also long for that fruition will, if we understand His ways, be able to praise Him for all His goodness, even when things seem hardest and most mysterious.

~Hannah Whitall Smith, The God of all Comfort

And in my brokenness, my dying, I only mirror where my Savior has already been.