Saturday, October 13, 2012

How Far We've Come...

I've come so far. I've come so far from where I started from. Set me down here a few years ago, and the hijabs and burqas would have scared me, and I would have smiled through.

Smiled while two airplanes flew through my mind to level the reality of their lives and sensitivity to their souls. Those twin towers would have been desecrated.

But it was in the rubble, the ashes, the mess of ground zero that He began to open my eyes to see past this - straight into the mess of their ground zero souls. And yes, they do have souls - emaciated, cracked, and torn - united by the creed, but separated by the war. They weep for significance and are starving for love, but they don't believe in a god like that, so they file him back on the shelf content but not content and chained to following him because they have nobody else. But my God says He sets prisoners free and somehow pieces together the million shards that make up life.

And when I finally understood His grace in light of my irrepair-ability, His mercy in light of my unforgive-ablility, and His joy in the salvation of my disease-riddled, suicidal, idolatrous, wounded and puss-oozing body, I sat up and looked at them again.

The airplanes in my mind were clearing the distance between me and them, but He had touched my puss-oozing body - He had taken it on and water and blood flowed from His side. If hijabs and burqas are impossible to reach, impossible to love, isn't an empty body on the tree an equally impossible solution?

Yes, if you don't know the end of the story.

He arose! He arose! From the pain of that crossbeam He walked away stained and scarred, but alive! And now His immortality we wrap around our mortal flesh and His incorruption we extend to burqa-ed death. His hands; His feet; His heart, and if hijabs and burqas are impossible to reach, impossible to love, isn't the living body of Christ Jesus interceding for us before the throne of a loving, merciful God an equally possible solution.

Set me down here now. His hand changed my heart, His feet changed my perspective. Hijab and burqa surround me, and underneath them the most precious people, and now, I'm wearing one too. It took His Body to bleed out our sin on Calvary, and it takes His Body in my body to let them know that God is love and that in Jesus Christ they have a covering unimaginably more beautiful than their rhinestone-studded hijabs.

I've come so far. I've come so far from where I started from. Those airplanes ripped right through the steel tower of me until I bled out my sin into His Body on the tree and trusted Hands and Feet to close the distance between them and me.

1 comment: