Thursday, December 01, 2005

Back Alley Saint

I have been maintaining two other blogs used for ministry purposes. This one is for the purpose of my own ramblings.

What is wrong with the world today? G.K. Chesterton answered this question one hundred years ago with a profound answer that still applies today. Only now it is a new author representing a new generation with the answer. What is wrong with the world? "“Dear Sirs, I am."”
Am I in the "Truman Show"? Probably. There is no other way to explain my amazing wealth of wisdom and understanding that only applies to the reality in which I live. Someone decided to write into the script that I must be restless. That I must be the one to see the world the way I see it while the rest of the world drifts blissfully unaware. I think it odd that God has given me the privilege to know what I know and then He gave me even a greater privilege of being tested by the ignorant world.
Drugs, violence, or the decline of morals cant match the injury I add to this broken world. I am called and gifted by God and I can'’t seem to fulfill even a small portion of this calling I have received. I believe that I am 100 percent saved but I will eagerly await the final verdict moments after I breathe my last. When I get to heaven I hope to hear "“well done", but if I do I'’m sure it will only be as I listen in on some other conversation. I will be in the back row, the back alley, or the back yard of heaven. I will patiently wait for just a glimpse of my Savior. While I wait I will be content to pick up the heavenly dog poop. In fact I would have it no other way.
Everything in me cries out for the limelight, the front row, the front door, and the front yard of heaven. That'’s why all the more I don't want it. Give me a broom. I will hang out with the sinners and clean the floors. We will clean the floors that the true saints scuff as they prance through the streets with Jesus. I know I am undeserving of the same privilege to get my Savior's ear. I will listen in on his musings, I will sneak around and hear the latest gossip about all that happens in heaven. At night I will return to the back alley and find comfort with my friends. The sinners who got to heaven smelling like smoke. The gays that just couldn't break their addiction even though they loved Jesus on earth, the murderers who repented just before getting the chair, the betrayers, the liars, the no good hypocrites who convinced Jesus that their love is real but who had no bodily discipline to consistently prove it.
While I'm in this world, I will continue to be the problem. Through people like me, the world will never be sure what to think about Jesus or Christians. Through people like me, the curse of sin will remain alive and well although I fight it. Even if I ever happen to dive deeper into love with my Savior and begin to be the example of a true follower, I will remain the problem. It is then that I will forget that the message of Jesus is because I am what is wrong. If I was not the problem in the world then why would Jesus have come to die? Why would he need to come if all believers were good enough to go through all the perfect motions of religion? The OT law could remain and "“perfect"” people would keep succeeding as followers.
Instead, Jesus came because I am the world. I am called by Jesus but I cant even say that I want the people I lead to live like me. That is why Jesus came. I love that He relentlessly pursues people like me and I pretend to yield but I'm not sure that I ever really do. I am an amazing dichotomy of a person. There are days the Lord must just shake his head and wonder how much longer he should stick with me. The world would have less wrong with it if he just took me from the world and gave me my broom.
I guess I will keep waiting and maybe one day I will get this life figured out. But that would require more than just complaining that I am unworthy...…and that'’s a lot to ask of back alley janitors.

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