A moment of decision.

1 Kings 13:8–9a And the man of God said to the king, “If you give me half your house, I will not go in with you. And I will not eat bread or drink water in this place, for so was it commanded me by the word of the Lord…”

I keep thinking of this passage I taught on in children’s church the other day. The kingdom of Israel had just been divided, and Jeroboam, a man who had been a servant of King Solomon, is suddenly lifted up by the Lord and placed into the position of king over 10 tribes of Israel. But in spite of the promise of God that He would put an eternal blessing on Jeroboam as king if he’d walk with Him, this new king went rapidly and devastatingly wayward and led the people of Israel into an idolatrous, heretical lifestyle far from God. 

And the Lord is great in mercy; as He did repeatedly in the times of the kings of Israel, He sent a prophet to Jeroboam in his decent into wickedness to call him back to the path of righteousness. But King Jeroboam didn’t receive the word, instead, he tried to use the power he had as king to harm the man of God, and God would have none of it. In an instant, He stripped him of his power even as he stretched out his hand, drying up the authority of his voice raised against the Lord. Then when Jeroboam had been restored through the prayer of the prophet on his behalf, instead of repenting, he looked at the prophet…and invited him to come home with him and partake in the pleasures of his earthly kingdom.

I love how this prophet looked back into the eyes of this king—this king who had chosen wickedness and forfeited the blessing of the Lord for the confidence of his own control and construction—and said, “No. I want nothing to do with the kingdom you are building; I want no part in the best you have to offer, nor will I even take a portion of the least of what you could set before me. You have made your choice, and I have made mine.”

There’s something about this moment of decision that feel so important right now.

A prayer of surrender

Some seasons for me are messier than others; lately I've been bringing all the pieces of my heart in all their complexity and just pouring them onto the altar...and this has been my accompanying prayer of surrender: "Burn up what You will, Lord. Purify whatever remains after Your holy fire falls. And plant whatever You wish to grow in me."

And so in this season where I cannot sort, I can still be sanctified because the Lord always receives the sacrifices we make in surrender, even if they aren't pretty. 

 

Psalm 5:3 TPT "At each and every sunrise You will hear my voice as I prepare my sacrifice of prayer to You. Every morning I lay out the pieces of my life on the altar and wait for Your fire to fall upon my heart."

The expanse of His bending

"He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap." Psalm 113:7

 

The Lord was ministering to me with Psalm 113:7 yesterday, and this morning as I sat down with Him, I looked into the rest of the Psalm and I am undone.

Psalm 113 speaks to the Lord being HIGH ABOVE ALL nations; China, Russia, the USA, Germany, Mexico, Brazil, Israel, Egypt, Monaco, Nigeria…every nation with every earthly leader and every ounce of earthly government, prestige and military might. It says that not only are these beneath Him, but they are FAR beneath Him. And while the glory of the earth and its nations may seem impressive (Olympians, natural wonders, scientific and technological advances, etc.), His glory—the sum of His being—dwarfs not only all the earth has to offer but also the heavens. And from this declaration of the immense wonder, worth and power of God, the Psalmist rightly declares His holiness, “Who is like the Lord our God…?” No one. He is set apart in every way; holy, holy, holy the right declaration as He is beheld.

Then the second half of the Psalm moves my heart is wondrous ways. Because then, this God who dwarfs the nations with His glory, presence, position and scope of vision reaches down through the distance of His exaltation and sets His hands into the dust to touch the ones with nothing to glory in; He puts those holy hands into the ashes of burned up lives and circumstance and picks up the ones who need; and with the humble of the world in His grasp, He covers them with honor. And then, He turns His eyes to the woman without, the lonely with the pain of unfulfilled longings, and He moves her to joy.

“Who is like the Lord our God…?” Our God who does not overlook the individual lives on whom death has left its mark. Our God who did not come to save nations—for nations are but a drop in a bucket to Him—but to save the people who fill those nations—marked with His image and the recipients of His affections. Who is like the Lord our God? Worthy of praise for all of time and yet concerned with the weak and lowly who have known only broken pieces and with the woman whose beating heart is cast down.

I don’t know if where you sit today is a place of authority at a table of honor or a pile of ashes from the life you’ve burned with your own sin. I don’t know if you hold in your hands everything you ever wanted or if your soul cries out from the bathroom floor in your longing for what you lack. But I do know this, the Lord our God is both mighty and meek. He is above the heights we could ever lift our eyes to and beneath the depths we could ever fall. He is worthy and yet willing, holy and yet love itself. Rest in His hands, it is there that joy will find you.

And do not miss the expanse of His bending, for the expanse is the door to understanding His praise.

Redeemed blessing

I am preparing to teach on Ruth 4 in Children’s Church on Sunday; it’s a chapter about Boaz redeeming Ruth. Last week I taught about how Boaz is intended to help us understand our Redeemer Jesus, so we considered the Redeemer’s heart. This week we will consider how and why He redeems. And because the book of Ruth is all about redemption, I found in the middle of this chapter a blessing that just strikes me in the best sort of way.

Look at this blessing in verses 11–12, “May the Lord make the woman, who is coming into your house, like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the house of Israel. May you act worthily in Ephrathah and be renowned in Bethlehem, and may your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah, because of the offspring that the Lord will give you by this young woman.”

I’ve read this blessing before and thought, “What strange women to draw blessing from.” Do you know the lives of Rachel, Leah and Tamar? Rachel and Leah were sold by their father to be wives to the same man; the pain of this sin against them on their lives is displayed in Genesis 29–30. Their relationships were fraught with toxic competition, striving for love, barrenness…reading those chapters makes me cry every time. But here in this blessing, it says, “Rachel and Leah, who together built up the house of Israel.” Redemption…under the blessing of the Lord, their lives brought forth the people of God. And then there’s Tamar, you can read about her in Genesis 38; lies, failures, sins by and against, a twisted pursuit of a son. And yet here it says, “May your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah, because of the offspring that the Lord will give you by this young woman.” Redemption…under the blessing of the Lord, the Messiah came forth through the house of Perez.

And today as I am considering and praying over the story, I head myself tell the Lord, “I am grateful that you did not build the lineage of Jesus on polished stones, but instead on stones that were hewn.” I struggle to relate to shiny, polished things…but hewn things…hewn things I can run my fingers across and understand the grooves of their forming. Forged from mountains and valleys, redeemed from fire and flood, purposefully shaped for stability.

Our Redeemer is good.

"He loved them to the end."

John 13:1–6 "Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end. During supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray Him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper. He laid aside His outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around His waist. Then He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around Him."

 

“He loved them to the end.”

He knew who He had chosen;
He knew the zeal of Peter,
the rolls of thunder in the sons of Zebedee,
the doubt in the mind of Thomas.
He knew the schemes that had made Matthew rich,
and how the sun glinted off the dagger of Simon.
He knew the eyes that slept while He prayed,
the feet that would scatter in the days ahead,
the lives that would be lost while living out His commission.

And He knew the one who would kiss His face
as He was bound amid the green of Gethsemane.

It was with knowledge of the soft and of the hard,
with the certainty of His enduring, pursuing love,
that Jesus used His final hours
to descend yet again
placing Himself beneath the feet of those who followed Him.

The hands into which the Father had given all things
tied a towel around His waist
and cradled the dirty feet of those He knew and loved;
desiring they would be clean
more than the deity of His own hands.

The One with the right to cast down
bent down
for the sake of love.

He loved them to the end;
the ones with their hearts given over to Him
and the one who opposed Him to death.
His love was not deterred by the hatred of man;
instead, it made provision for the devoted to live
and for the hateful to turn.

Rising from the floor on which He knelt,
His voice flowed into the room made quiet by what had been received.
It rolled across the hearts of those made clean
filling their senses with His holy, holy, holy call,
“Love as I have loved you.”

From Zar to Citizen of Heaven

The Lord woke me up with a dream this week. In this dream I was registering patients at a hospital when a friend I knew from high school walked in with a woman who was having terrible chest pain. I picked up her registration form and my friend looked relieved because she knew I could help. I brought the woman back to my desk; she was uncomfortable and a bit nervous, but overall bright in her attitude and demeanor, confident that she had come to the right place for the help she needed. As I sat her down, I opened up the registration program for the first time (I had worked registration during college, so they didn’t bother training me in, just assumed I could pick it back up). As I got things going, I looked at my paper and noticed on the name line, she had simply written the word “Zar.” During our discussion, she told me that was the name she was called, and because she wasn’t ever called by her given name, she struggled to remember what her legal name was. After some digging, I managed to draw her first and last name out of her, and chose to register her as her legal name with Zar as the middle name.

I first tried to find a medical record that had been previously opened to build from, but she was nervous to give her social security number out loud with people around, so I let her type it in. Finding no record on file, I started a new one and was met with utter random confusion. As I tried to find the places to enter the information, I had to navigate through videos, games, flashing screens—every sort of entertainment was crammed into the program. I frantically tried to find the input areas to give the information needed to create a chart for the dying woman sitting in front of me, but my efforts were slowed and frustrated by the avalanche of unnecessary and distracting visuals.

When I finally made it to the end of the chart, utterly frustrated and overwhelmed, I hit print only to discover that autocorrect had changed the spelling of the legal name. I went out to check on the patient in the lobby, where she was waiting anxiously to be seen, and I desperately tried to figure out how to get her chart to the nurse so they knew she was ready even though I knew everything would have to be restickered because of the error in the legal name (although “Zar,” which I put in the middle name input slot had printed clearly). With my laptop beside her in the lobby, I desperately tried to find the screen with the name input to change it, realized in the fray I had never even found the insurance page and tried to get that information and seek out where input it…pages and pages of animated chaos hiding everything from me. My friend kept looking at me in confusion of why I wasn’t helping. All the while, Zar sat in front of me crying from her pain, dying in the waiting room of the hospital that was suppose to help her simply because they had chosen a registration program—the program that admits you to enter in for help—that was overrun by entertainment.

And in my desperate groveling for what to do, how to get her seen, how to navigate the impossible admission program, I woke up.

And when I woke up and thought about this dream, I cried out to God. Our culture is one of entertainment: It demands instant gratification and won’t venture forward without it; it laments boredom and simplicity (the very things that allow for the cultivating of curious and creative minds); it despises reality, wisdom and practicality (the things that allow for us to build lives well lived); it sucks away our time on meaningless things (social media, gaming, movies and shows); it takes our concentration and focus and availability to do the work God created us for. I did inventory of my own distractions, repenting for myself and the American Church.

I also looked up the woman’s name: Zar. The Hebrew word "Zar" means “alien, foreign, outside.”

This is the meaning of the dream and the exhortation to the body of Christ:
The hospital here is the body of Christ. People are dying outside of Jesus; desperate for help and for the Gospel. But we at the doorway, the ones meant to bring the Gospel to the lost and dying world so that they may know redemption and salvation, are failing. We are overridden with entertainment: flashy facades, video games, movies, TV, sports, activities, our own comforts, social media, anything fun. But people are dying! The lost are waiting to be found, the sick are waiting for the healing touch of Jesus, the broken are waiting to know the One who can put them back together, the confused are waiting for the clarity of Truth, the bound are waiting for their deliverer…and we who are suppose to reach out with the hands and feet of Jesus and draw them in are failing them.

Our heart for the lost must be GREATER THAN our desire for the flesh to be entertained.

Here is the passage the Lord gave me for this dream, please pause and consider:

Ephesians 2:13,17–20 “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ…And He came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit."

His face is mine

Habakkuk 3:17–19a "Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fail and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign Lord is my strength; He makes my feet like the feet of a deer, He enables me to tread on the heights."

worship of the weary
©4-26-23 hannah mclean

on valley floor
with eyes swollen
from bawling
voice a whisper
from endless calling
the whimper of the weary
dissolves in worship

lament of faith too small
looks up into Your face
to find not disappointment
but pleasure that
the downcast eyes have
searched for Yours

inside the heap of rubble
broken bits of heart and circumstance
the air fills
with worship of the only One worthy

for when prayer
goes unanswered
worship still satisfies
for Holy face is more than
what flows from Holy hand

deepest desire meets
deepest need
and finds no lack

His face is mine

A poem from my time in Isaiah 58

"And the Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail. And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt, you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in." Isaiah 58:11–12

o Father Who stands with me
in flames
and forges through the wilderness
when gales of sand and wind
whip my face
Who hears my voice
cry out through mouth
parched and
jaw pained from gritted teeth

o Father who fills
faster than life draws
to You my knees bow
my hands lift up
and my heart wholly reaches

i thirst
i come
You fill
until
i overflow

o Father Who brings the good growth
Who gives courage to break up fallow ground
Who gives strength to uproot weeds that strangle
and dislodge rocks that hinder
make me a watered garden
nourished from within and out
by Holy love

strengthen my bones
make me stand tall
my backbone unshakeable
my legs unbreakable
my hands strong enough
to build
to raise up
to repair
to restore
be the fortitude that forges
through my being
planted by Your hands
with precision
and permission
to being glory to You
make me able to bear up
beneath the weight that
falls upon my shoulders

o Father
all sufficient
i rest inside Your keeping

A meditation on Psalm 84:5–8

Psalm 84:5–8
5 Blessed are those whose strength is in You,
    in whose heart are the highways to Zion.
6 As they go through the Valley of Baca
    they make it a place of springs; 

    the early rain also covers it with pools.
7 They go from strength to strength; 

    each one appears before God in Zion.
8 O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer; 

    give ear, O God of Jacob! Selah

Verse 5 begins with the declaration that the one who has no strength within themselves, and must draw fully from the Lord, is blessed. Being in a position where we feel the full force of our weakness is not pleasant, in fact, it is downright painful, but here the Lord tells us that this place of desperate want is a place of blessing. And as the psalmist continues, we will begin to see some of the reasons why.

This verse completes this declaration by adding that the means of blessing is not just the weak one finding their strength in the Lord, it is also that the highways of their hearts lead them to Him. A highway is road that is well-traveled; much work has gone into laying its foundation, maintaining and building up the place where feet continually tread. And where do these highways forged upon the heart lead? To Zion; the dwelling place of God. Namely, whether you are in the Valley or in the heights, build the highways in your heart to lead you to the Lord—make your course to His arms and His keeping so continual that it becomes second nature; it makes me think of Nathan’s Grandma Lillian who sat at the piano in her advanced state of dementia and played hymns…she may not have remembered our names, but she remembered His.

Verse 6 speaks to the valleys of life that we would not choose, the places of such pain, grief and despair that they are referred to here as “the Valley of weeping.” Be it loss or lack, whatever has dragged us down to this place of want and sorrow, we find what comes to the saint who has cast themselves upon the strength of the Lord and whose heart runs with weariness and desperation to Him; “springs.” A spring is a place where water moving underground finds an opening to the land surface and emerges. A spring draws water from an aquifer, which, get this, is a water-bearing rock. So essentially, the psalmist is saying that as we go through the Valley of weeping, we learn to draw living water from the Rock. And in case we languish along the way, there has been an “early rain,” where God has gone before us and provided pools of water from which to drink. I wish I could lay out how clearly this moves my heart—from my own experience, oftentimes those pools are found in the people who stand beside us in our pain because they’ve been there before. He knows the paths that we must tread; every jagged edge of every rock at the bottom of every valley has pressed first into His flesh before it has reached ours. He is sufficient to bear us up.

And can I point out, it says, “as they go THROUGH the Valley…” There is time to laugh and a time to weep, and both are seasons filled with purpose. But we need not remain in the Valley forever.

Verse 7 tells us that even as we draw our strength from the Lord; the revelation of new and endless weakness only leads us into new and endless aspects of coming to KNOW God’s strength. When we lean fully upon Him, His arms draw us nearer and nearer His kind and merciful face.

And finally, to end this wonderful meditation, we must look at verse 8. Here the Psalmist appeals to the Lord by two of His many names: Lord of Hosts and God of Jacob. I have found that the uses of God’s name in the Bible are so intentional that to investigate why they are placed where they are leads to opening up layers of richness to both the passages I am considering as well as aspects of who God is. I found both of these names to be interesting choices, but the reasons I found for their placement are full of encouragement and beauty.

Lord of Hosts. This means Lord of armies…angel armies…myriads and myriads of angelic beings are at the service of the Lord. I often use this name when I pray for things surrounding great battles; and while that could absolutely be appropriate in this context (Valleys of Weeping can bring about many battles of the heart, mind and emotions), I found another consideration that blessed my heart. One of the reasons God made angels is to minister to humans (Psalm 91:11–12, Matthew 4:11, Hebrew 1:7, etc); here the Psalmist, staggering his way through a seasons of great darkness—emptied of self—cries out to God for what he needs—many, many angels to tend to his many, many wounds.

God of Jacob. This one I just can’t get over. Let me tell you about Jacob. Jacob means “deceiver, cheater;” from the womb he bore a name that spoke into his life choices, and there was great cost to the choices he made. He cheated his brother Esau out of his birthright, and tricked his father into giving him the blessing not intended for him. And as a direct result, he had to flee his home and never saw either of his parents again. He continued his journey by working for 20 years for a man whose character flaws matched his own and then some. But instead of growing in bitterness and zeal for self, Jacob grew in humility. And when he was finally heading home, he heard word that his brother Esau, whose hatred and pursuit of revenge had caused him to flee, was coming to meet him with what was essentially a small army. And Jacob was undone; he took all his fear and despair and humble acknowledgement of guilt. His tired legs from running, and he grabbed hold of God with both hands and wrestled with Him—his determination that he would not rise without the blessing of the Lord left him not just with a limp, but with a new name and a family that carried the promise of the Messiah. Jacob reminds me that the moments of wrestling with God in the valley of weeping are the moments that change the way we walk; they bring about conviction and the certainty of proven faith if we will but drink from the springs of living water that are called forth from the Rock of Ages when the force of our fall breaks the hard places within us. Let us call out to the God of Jacob; the God who has seen our choices that didn’t pan out, our sin that caused great loss, our compilation of offenses done against us, our emotional turmoil that causes us to blunder and falter amid the failure and despair of life….this God of Jacob who has seen and even still will go before, stand beside, and come behind us to redeem to the uttermost any and every broken life with compassion and gentleness and the authority of perfect love.

The lower shelf

I’m in the process of going through a “forgiveness journey,” venturing through the book Forgiving What You Can’t Forget by Lysa Terkheurst; it’s been an interesting trek as it has unveiled aspects of my life that have really caused me to limp in areas where I should stride.

The week I am in currently is looking into events or lessons that impacted my life in profound ways (for better or for worse). I find myself considering some things I picked up along the way and how they have affected my gate.

Over the last several years I have been gathering words to help me heal from the warped view I received of my femininity and worth; I was not certain I had dignity and struggled to maintain my humanity in the face of the objectification that stripped me of personhood. I grew up believing I was a second class human, destined for the cast offs of life, always just out of reach of what I truly wanted. And I adapted—human beings are incredible in their ability to adapt—I trained myself that though I was free to dream without limits, I was to stretch no higher than the lower shelf and to be content with what I found there.

This translates in some interesting ways as an adult in the Body of Christ. Do you want to know how I answered the question, “How have these events or perceptions affected what you believe about God?”? I wrote, “His best love and blessing are for others, and I am just grateful for the crumbs of grace. My hand doesn’t reach high enough.” I find that over the years I have battled these words, “It can cause me to stop seeking the desires laid on my heart because surely I’ve received all He’s willing to give someone like me.”

I walk out my faith in this tension: I KNOW the Lord’s generous, lavish love—it has landed upon me with such gentleness and such force that it was shaped me forever—and yet I never stop marveling at it. I am a book filled with innumerable testimonies that witness of God’s outlandish heart for me…and the reason I probably remember each of these markings so vividly is because they still surprise me every time.

I wrote this down in my journal as I process that, imagery to my place:

I see myself as a little girl
looking longingly at the festivities
of a party…
while clutching my invitation
in my grateful hand.
Longing to belong.
I’ve entered through the gate,
eager to celebrate,
but unable to shake
the outside from within.
Courage and faith
moved my feet to come,
but it is only the certainty of love
that will embolden me
to enter in.

I know there are no second tier citizens in the kingdom of God; He doesn’t set aside a group of people who He withholds His greatest blessings from; He doesn’t mark some of us as acceptable, but not accepted; He doesn’t plant the longing for all into the hearts of those intended only for some.

Ephesians 1:3–10 says “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with EVERY spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as HE CHOSE US in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. IN LOVE He predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace, with which He has blessed us in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, ACCORDING TO THE RICHES of His grace, which He LAVISHED upon us, in ALL wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of His will, according to His purpose, which He set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in Him, things in heaven and things on earth.”

In Christ, I get EVERY blessing because IN LOVE He chose to LAVISH the RICHES of His grace on me. This is the truth. It’s the truth the overshadows the lies to which I have adapted. It’s the truth that speaks the better word than the voices that set me up to settle for the dust. It’s the truth that lifts my eyes to the heights and gives me the courage to stretch out my hand. I may have approached Jesus’ feet to wrap my desperate fingers around the crumbs of grace that fell from His table, but He didn’t leave me there; His hand reached down to pull me up and He gave me a chair so that I could partake of the fullness of His feast.

So today I look upon my mud-smattered image and praise the Lord that no matter how much dirt has gathered and hidden my perception of place in this life, I hold within my hand the blood-bought, Spirit-sealed invitation to enter in and partake with all believers of the greatness of His lavish love and glorious grace.

Shallow love

“Our problem is not our difference of opinions. It’s the shallowness of our love.” Francis Chan

I read those words today (and listened to the corresponding interview), and I have to say, my heart is weightily moved. Francis wasn’t looking around at culture and making an observation on the overarching secular scene; he was referring to the Church—evangelical Christians, people claiming the name of Christ and walking in ways that oppose His name. It makes me want to cry. Sincerely, I fight back tears as I write this.

How is it that we who claim to know what it is to be loved by the One True Living God—the God Who poured Himself out to redeem us even as we rebelled and turned our backs—how is it that our love lacks such depth? How is it that lives that claim to be touched and transformed by perfect love struggle and fail to show even the smallest portion of love to even our spiritual family? Shallow love. How can lives that have been touched by the deepest wells of love come up so utterly dry?

It’s Good Friday, nearing the end of this Holy Week; and I think the reason that this quote bowled my heart over in the way it did is because I find myself looking at a situation that is not only contradictory to reason, but troubling in its repercussions.

This day we look in our minds eye at our Savior hanging upon a cross: Innocent blood pours out of His rent body, flowing out of gaping wounds and around piercing nails; His holy, royal head hangs down upon his heavy, human chest; pressed into his smattered hair sits a crude crown of thorns—a far cry from the diadems of beauty that were made to adorn Him; His arms splay as His throat produces one last raspy sigh, “It is finished.”

Jesus was not murdered. Jesus laid down His life.

For Love’s sake.

“While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” He didn’t do it because we were worthy, well-deserving, lovely and lovable. He didn’t even do it because we asked. He did it because He is love and because He set His heart upon humanity—ugly, broken, sinful, wicked, wandering, rebellious, lost human beings.

We must not overlook this loving God. We must not forget this act of love we claim to have received, nor the heart of the One who acted on our behalf because a life lived in the wonder of this love will not remain shallow. It will not remain shallow because it has been saturated with love from the deepest of wells in the purest of ways; a love so real and so lovely that life springs up from the smallest drop and beauty emerges at the slightest touch.

So this good Friday, in this painful lament, I exhort you, brothers and sisters in Christ: Look upon the One whom we have pierced. Let His sacrifice rend your heart; if it has not ripped you open in sorrowful repentance then you have not lingered at the foot of the cross long enough to consider the deity of this Son of Man. Let our love for one another—the agape that is suppose to reveal Jesus to a longing world—begin in the utter humility of beholding God Himself die in our stead. Humility will not leave us in the shallowness of love; it is humility that leads us into the depths and propels us into the heights.

What a Savior. May we be a people whose love reflects His.