Open thy gate of mercy, gracious God! My soul flies through these wounds to seek out thee.
~William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of His mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by His grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.
~Titus 3:4-7
Oh beloved, it is true. We are, each of us, impoverished beyond our ability to comprehend. Our hearts, apart from His transplant, are cold, sharp and angry stone. We hurt. And we hurt others. The only thing we have ever known is a growing separation between ourselves and anyone and anything that matters.
We flounder in the vacuum of our aloneness. We are gasping for breath. There is no good air to breathe. Then, in our last gasp, we cry out: “Save me! i need You Jesus!!” And save us He does. There is no doubt about it.
Still, a tremendous problem exists in our lives.
Our problem is no longer that we face perdition, but that we have no idea of how radical the saving is that we have just undergone. We tend to think that our salvation has put us into some sort of “safe area,” wherein we will wait for the coming Day of our Homegoing. We still (nearly always) live as though we have to call out across some distance to a god who might save us again, if we get into trouble, and if we ask just right.
And in living this way, we miss the entire point of the Salvation He has already wrought.
Read the passage again. He has poured out Himself, His Very Spirit (read the omnipresence of G_d; the eternal, unchanging, all-everywhereness of Who He is) into our lives. We are drenched in His Love.
It is as though (and very much like actually) a warrior has burst in behind enemy lines and brought us out from our captors, whilst shielding us with His very Own Self. But it gets even better. We are not rescued and let go. We are rescued and invited into the Life of the One Who saved us.
Said more simply: We are now, never alone. He is in us. And we are in Him.
However, it gets better. Lots better.
This same oneness that you have with Him, in His Spirit, through His Son Jesus Christ, is the same oneness that i have. Thus, we are all knit together in a way that has nothing to do with proximity. We can be intimate with a person 5 time zones away, because we are already eternally one – together with Him. So, when our hearts yearn for the presence of a friend or relative, we are – in ways more real than sitting in the same room – already together.
Can we see it? We are His body. And all of His Body is working together for good. We are the symphonic movement of His heart in this fallen world. And for those who have entered into Christ, through Christ, any separation that we sense has very little to do with reality. We are, to put it bluntly, united with the G_d of the universe. We are one with Him – and through this reality, we are one with each other.
So, are you cringing under the load of missing someone? Are you feeling distant from G_d because of some failure in your flesh? Perhaps it is time to understand that mercy is not a little thing. Mercy is the cleansing and covering perfection of G_d pouring out to us in the only measure He uses: Infinite. His Love towards us (and then our Love towards others) has no boundaries or limits. And this same Love removes any distance between us and Him – and each other.
Tonight is your night beloved. Time to Live where you already are: in Him, by Him, and through Him.
