Stained

Some days it’s hard not to give up on people. Not just some people, all of humanity really. It’s hard when my kiddos die of diseases and traumatic accidents and the like, but when the malicious, intentionally evil things seem to keep ruling this place, sometimes you just want to curl up in a ball and ugly-cry your face off. I know, I’ve done it. When yet another gunshot victim, or head-bashed-in-with-a-rock victim, or repeated-stabbing-with-broken-bottles victim comes in.

For me it’s yet another hydrocephalus baby abandoned at the hospital, or even worse, the days-old, spina bifida baby that was brought to us after being found in a dumpster. In the trash. The baby was thrown in the trash. She was thrown away. She’s doing okay now- cleaned up, eating, getting antibiotics and wound care for the lesions covering her body. But thinking about the evil this baby has endured thus far in her little life, it seems too crushing, like an elephant on my chest. Like I said, it’s hard not to give up on people. We’re so ugly and hurtful and hateful, bent and broken and stained by sin, capable of such unspeakable evil.

This is when I really cannot wrap my mind around God’s love. Because sometimes I think He should just squish us. We deserve it. We deserve to be squished. All of us. Especially by Him. Because really even those of us that look okay on the outside, with the manicured lawn and washed windows, on the inside we’re stained too. The selfishness and hatred that lurks in my heart is as dark as baby-trashing. That’s what is really crushing. And He sees it all, even the stains in me that I don’t even know about. He knows them. He sees yours too. We’re all baby-trashers.

“When the time was right, the Anointed One died for all of us who were far from God, powerless, and weak. Now it is rare to find someone willing to die for an upright person, although it’s possible that someone may give up his life for one who is truly good. But think about this: while we were wasting our lives in sin, God revealed His powerful love to us in a tangible display—the Anointed One died for us. As a result, the blood of Jesus has made us right with God now, and certainly we will be rescued by Him from God’s wrath in the future. If we were in the heat of combat with God when His Son reconciled us by laying down His life, then how much more will we be saved by Jesus’ resurrection life? In fact, we stand now reconciled and at peace with God. That’s why we celebrate in God through our Lord Jesus, the Anointed.” Romans 6:6-11

What the what?! Seriously? I have heard the Gospel since I was knee-high to a grasshopper (obviously an expression; I was knee-high to a Harlem Globetrotter by the time I could stand), but it knocks me on my face over and over again. How God could possibly look down on all this mess and not squish us- to still want us and love us and die for us, enduring all of our darkness, so that our stains might be washed clean. To call us not Despised or Evil, but Beloved. It amazes me sometimes the work that God has done in me, to have taken my capacity to love others from thimble-sized to teacup-sized, a work He continues every day despite my failing. But His Love? His Never Stopping, Never Giving Up, Unbreakable, Always and Forever Love? I think the song “The Love of God” describes it my favorite way:

Could we with ink the ocean fill,

And were the skies of parchment made,

Were every stalk on earth a quill,

And every man a scribe by trade;

To write the love of God above

Would drain the ocean dry;

Nor could the scroll contain the whole,

Though stretched from sky to sky

So I guess I’m not going to give up on humanity today. I’m going to dry my eyes and thank my God and keep loving those despicable people. How could I not? He didn’t give up on me.