10. false step

I use an old picture to book mark the pages in whatever material I’m reading. It’s a photo of me as a child sitting with my parents and my Uncle Kurt on a table at a place called Awana. My uncle would some day run the summer camp and raise his own kids there.

It was always mystifying to see my dad’s brother and him together because they looked so much alike and shared a great deal of the same mannerisms. They would reminisce about stories of brotherhood rivalry and seeing them laugh together always made me happy.

My uncle was someone I looked up to. His life was dedicated to loving God, loving people, and raising his family to do the same. Being around him felt like being in the presence of someone great; I always believed that he could withstand whatever was thrown his way, as if he were somehow immovable. He possessed the characteristics of Christ and I didn’t even know it.

In 2018 he passed away very suddenly without the opportunity to say goodbye. I’d experienced pain of all sorts, but upon this news my heart trembled with a grief I had not previously known. My dad lost his only sibling, young sons and a daughter lost their father, a wife lost her husband, and a mother lost her son. It seemed so premature and so wrong.

My uncle’s funeral brought out more people than the building was fit for and it was an overwhelming tribute to the number of families and individuals that he touched. Standing beside the casket with my family and his, we shook hands of all who came by to pay their respects. Every one of them offered stories of what an incredible man of God he had been and how much of an impact he had left on their own lives.

I remember the air around me grew thick, nearly impossible to breathe in and I felt wrecked; trapped there knowing the way I had been living was in stark contrast. I wanted to run and hide to somehow cover myself. We sang worship songs and my tears were uncontainable as I wondered why he was taken and not me, who could not seem to do anything except fail in my efforts to be good.

After the service I wrote a letter to my uncle as a keep sake of sorts in remembrance of who he was. I promised to never forget him, to find a man who cared for others the way that he did, and I promised to change my ways to become a better daughter and friend.

The experience seemed like a genuine wake up call; but I was still an unrepentant sinner and a slave to the power of my own brokenness/sin. I avoided all that could usher me into total transformation rather than behavior modification. The words damaged and worthless still saturated the walls of my mind and the default setting of self sufficiency clicked into place.

The summer after my uncle’s passing, my heart did soften considerably. Feelings of resentment and irritation lost their teeth. I wanted to leave my heart open to something and I held onto a hope that the “defect” in my ability to be a Christian and to find favor with God could somehow be fixed or obtained from some effort of my own strength.

I kept to myself, and unlinked arms with some of my previous crowd. I chopped out a little roughness here, a bad habit or two there, but my notions about what to pursue and how to pursue it were still founded in the world. My sinful heart had a cord yet to be severed at the root.

Charles Spurgeon said…

“If you do a wrong thing in the rightest way in which it can be done, it does not make it right. If you go contrary to the Lord’s will, even though you do it in the most decent, and perhaps, in the most devout manner, it is, nevertheless, sinful and it will bring you under condemnation.”

I craved to stay true to my promises and I longed to clean up my life more than anything, but all I ended up doing was finding decent ways to live in sin. The gooeyness of guilt made a mess of me, but hardly beckoned a swift alteration to the course of my actions. Drinking still played a significant part in my desire to escape, but since it was in good company it didn’t seem as destructive. My words were still minced with malic, deceit, and foul language but I spoke to make people laugh, so I didn’t count it as a strike. Discontentment and jealousy were still regulars in my bank of emotions, but I thought their appearances to be justified. I loved my parents but honoring them was a continuous cycle of dishonesty to put up a front. And the desire to love God himself remained a fruitless effort like a dead and fallen tree.

My plans for a fresh start only allowed me to become skilled at putting lipstick on a pig. The ground I stood on sifted and sunk and I long felt like I was free running with the wind.

In the first few chapters of a book in the Bible called Hosea, we are introduced to a story about a prophet named Hosea, which translates to salvation. He had been given instruction from God to marry a prostitute named Gomer. The pairing does not seem to be aligned. She is prone to wander and stray from the marriage to the attention of other men; and he has been in close contact with God, seeming to more righteous.

The sacred nature of the covenant breaks when Hosea’s wife does in fact choose to pursue adultery. Personally, the craziest aspect is not that Gomer cheats on her husband, affairs are hardly uncommon. The most startling part is that while she is in the midst of betraying her husband, Hosea seeks her out and provides for her needs. He gives to his wife when he should have forsaken her! He chooses to be gracious to her and she turns around to use what her husband bestowed, in her extramarital relationships rather than immediately returning to her husband. She doesn’t even realize that what she’d been given was from Hosea, and so continuously marches willingly into sin, causing others to do the same. When first reading this, my initial reaction was to think how could she and why does Hosea keep going back to her?

But now I realize I should very well be saying how could I? This union of Hosea and Gomer is to be a representation of Jesus and us. I am completely imperfect, prone to wander from accepting Christ’s love and towards the affections of other things. With this extended love, I hadn’t come to His side to be embraced. With the brain He gave me, I used it to plot and spindle lies and further my selfish endeavors. With the body He gave me to be a temple, I considered it mine to bring others into. With the emotions He created me with, I used to remain in useless despair. All that Christ offered, I turned around and gave to whatever else I chased after. But God is unlike any other in His pursuits (1 Kings 8: 23). He is faithful when I am not.

Hosea 11: 9 explains how He can handle our idolatry…

for I am God and not man, the Holy one in your midst and I will not come to wrath.

That is all He has to say, I am God. He is able. Jesus sought me out when it made absolutely no sense to because He is perfectly loving, perfectly patient, perfectly kind, able to bear all things, not easily angered and does not keep a record of all my wrongdoing to slap me with a guilty charge. There is no one else like this. No other god or deity or person on earth who does not change and cannot go against their nature (2 Timothy 2:13). None whose condition to just to love and be loved.

In incredible mercy, Jesus would humble me with trials to become desperate enough to finally fall on my face and cry out help me, I have no where else to turn, I cannot do this life on my own. The savior of the world would prove His nature to me even when I could not see it, to break up my hard heart and truly know that it was time to seek the Lord (Hosea 8:7; 11:9).