I hear it like the drum beat of my own heart throbbing for sins I cannot repay. I feel it like the taboo of words of confession long on my lips but never sufficing. But He interrupts me in my mutterings of confession, and a simple image crushes my confessing lips until they are bruised with anguish. For He has bled, drop by drop, for this sin I cannot forgive myself for. He has shed every tear, sweat blood in Gethsemane, and hung naked on the tree to cleanse this sin from the book of my life. Erased! Erased! Erased! He calls, as I linger on in self-torment. Does my blood mean nothing to you? Would you shed your own, the sinful river of blood running through human veins that cannot repay, when the perfect Lamb has already been slain for this sin you call unforgivable? Would you spend your days in torment in a prison you've built yourself, when everything I own, I, King of Glory, I would give you freely? Joy unspeakable, cup running over, and you trade it for bitter hyssop and a cup full of vinegar and days full of tears?
And as He whispers, deep in the silent night as I sit on the porch steps and watch the storm clouds rolling in, my house asleep, and my sleep destroyed by nightmares. He whispers something of a princess whose crown was ruined long ago. He whispers He doesn't care; He sings of rescue. Something about a castle where that princess was captive. Something about throwing out curses and drawing lines in the sand, and gathering the stones that would have been hurled my way into piles instead (
John 8).
Restoring crowns, and redeeming all of us, sinners - scandalous, scorched and scourged - the beautiful broken. He has made us whole.
...reposting an excerpt from
this post, humbled by my own words from March 9, 2011
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