"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in someone else's eye? How can you say, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own?" Matthew 7:3-4
I am a sinner.
I am. It's a part of my nature, a part of my being, a part of what happens when you live in a broken world. Being a sinner cannot be helped. There are days that it is possible to be like Jesus. There are days that it is impossible. My humanity causes to me to fall short. Yet, in my sinfulness, in my brokenness, God meets with me. God allows me to return and embraces me as God's own. Christ loves me in spite of me. I rest in that understanding. I rest in who Christ is and who he claims to be. Despite my sin, I am on the road to beautiful.
It is truly a humbling thought. Knowing that you are loved by a creator, by a messiah who lowered himself to serve. That thought alone is enough to bring you to your knees. It is hard to accept sometimes. Starring at myself in the mirror, I see the lines that age has brought me. I see the grey hairs. I see the scars of my life. I see in my eyes, the true nature of myself. I see who I am. It is hard to accept the love of God when I fear that I cannot accept myself. The beauty of it is that I do not have to accept myself.
A student asked, "I want to get close to God, but I first have to be okay with me. Right?" It's a common thought. We often say, "I will commit to loving another as soon as I learn to love myself." We emphasize knowing ourselves and being okay with who we are. The problem is, without the faith of God's love, it is difficult, almost impossible, to love ourselves. The road to beautiful is a road that is led by one who walks with us daily showing us our beauty, holding it until we are able to hold it ourselves.
The plank that resides in our eyes often blinds us to our own faults. It's easier, safer, less painful to point out the faults of others. To look at them and say, "You have sinned. Beg for forgiveness." Christians come across as being in competition with one another when it comes to sin. Each one denying their own faults and exuberantly pointing out others. In response to this criticism others begin to "one up" with their own faults, "Oh, I was a horrible sinner when God found me." "Oh yea, I bet I was worse." Each one proudly proclaiming they were worse than the other when they found God. Then when the competition against one another becomes too uppity, we begin to compete with God. "Lord, there is absolutely no way you could love a sinner like me." "You see Lord, I'm too bad to be loved." "Lord, I know you loved sinners, saints, beggars, tax collectors, adulterers; but there's no way you could love me."
Henri Nouwen writes, "When we give up our competition with God and offer God every part of our heart, holding nothing back at all, we come to know God's love for us and discover how safe we are in God's embrace." In our competition with one another and with God, our road to beautiful becomes littered with religious ideology that is not of Christ but of ourselves. We are unable to know ourselves fully because we are afraid that if we let go into God's arms, we will not have anything left to hold up. Not our piety, our sinfulness, or ourselves.
All we are being asked to do is have faith in the love of Christ. Faith that trusts unreservedly that we are loved, so that we can abandon every false way of obtaining love. We are on the road to beautiful. Thanks be to God.
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