Oh how often we identify ourselves with people...People we have known, people we have heard about, or people currently in our lives...When I read a story, especially one in the Bible, I often do just that...When Jesus was pissing off the Pharisees because he was merciful to the lowly and poor, I thought at times I was the lowly and poor that Jesus has compassion for...After awhile I realized I was dead wrong...I was the Pharisee. I am the Pharisee.
Funny thing, I'm watching Prince Caspian as I type...I have realized how much I am like Peter; in the book/movie, and in the Bible...I feel like I have it under control and I feel like I'm fine...I take charge and imply my own set of standards and rules, thinking I know best how to handle something...
Then I fail.
Hard.
The worst part is...Sometimes I don't feel bad...Sometimes I don't care enough that I failed...
There is a scene where Peter sits in front of a statue of Aslan...This is after he has tried a slue of things on his own, making his own decisions for whatever he thought was best...They were all made with emotion and little decision-making time...Well, Peter sits there and wonders how his sister trust even when it seems like Aslan is not there...Like Aslan had abandoned them...Aslan didn't abandon them though...When Peter asks Lucy how she knows that Aslan is real and alive, he begs for proof...Lucy's answer haunts me:
"Maybe we're the ones that need to prove ourselves to Him."I want to be so many great things and do so much...But I am unwilling to prepare in the way I have been asked and commanded to do so...I fall and fall and fall and feel no remorse...I set myself up for failure...I watch as I lead myself down the wide path...I am my own worst enemy...
I give credit to the evil...I let it have a personality, a mind of its own...Letting it take root in my heart and grow from a seed...I listen to its whispers and its chants...I let it have my feelings and senses...I let it have me...
How minuscule and incomplete my understanding of grace is...Not grace because I want to feel better after I fall...But Grace because I want to understand life before the fall...
I want to recognize that the hole can never be completely filled with black...
I want to recognize that the hole can only be completely filled with RED.
"But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead."
Philippians 3:7-11
