I have been thinking a lot about my depravity. Somehow, the crushing of my ego becomes rejuvenating, and I ruminate in my horrendous existence. Yet, I'm realizing that I like being in pieces. I like being cracked and wearied, and feeling unworthy of any love.
I think something is terribly wrong with me.
I talk a lot about being seen like Christ. I marvel in this idea that we are united with the Son, and in that, we are viewed as righteous. We are worthy of being called children of God because Christ has redeemed us and taken all our depravity and covered it in his perfect and holy blood. I like that a lot.
And I think its healthy. I think we should be made increasingly aware of how unable we are to merit God's favor. To see clearly, that we are not the sum of our actions before Christ: we are simply his.
I nanny two precious boys: Tyler, 4, and Sean, 2. Everything they do is perfect. Sean spins in circles and touches the ground to a FloRida song, and suddenly he's a choreographer. Tyler counts to 24, and suddenly he's a math wizard. I am like Grandma, whose reality extends only to the existence of these two children; therefore their every move is glorious and wonderful.
Sometimes, I'm not so pleased. Like the time, Tyler shoved his brother off the front porch. Or the time, Sean kicked and screamed furiously because I held Tyler's hand to cross the road. But I don't love those boys because their good moments outnumber their bad. I love them, because they're my children. They are the kids I identify with; the ones that I feel personally responsible for. I take joy in their being, and even when they hurt me, I love them. I forgive them, because I know their youth and the foolishness that goes along with it.
God is kind of like that with us. He rests in heaven, watching us be children. He watches our nonsensical mistakes and he hates our sin, but he sees it through the lens of our foolishness, and knows one day we will be more sanctified than we are now. He knows multivariable calculus, but he celebrates when we get 2 + 2 right on only the third try.
But somewhere, in my love of brokenness and depravity, I've lost touch with reality. Being broken and hating oneself is not the same as making silly mistakes. Its blatant sin. If God loves us, who are we not to love ourselves?
I like to think sometimes, that hating myself means I'm not prideful. I like to think that if I am lost in the abyss of my badness, then I won't ever get any worse. I forget that God doesn't call us to be in misery. He calls us to boast with gladness that we are his. That we are in him. That we are transforming from one degree of glory to another. I get stuck in Romans 3:23 and forget verse 24. We are justified (declared righteous) by God's grace through Christ Jesus. There is no doubt that I am totally depraved, and I need to be reminded a bit more frequently of that fact. However, God has already decided that I am good. Not because of anything I do or anything I am, but because he has freely chosen to call me that through the work of his son.
So my brokenness is a good starting stage. When your foundation is shaky, the house must come down. Yet, God doesn't ask for me to be a pile of rumble before him. He calls me to be rooted, built up, and established in the faith. That faith that says that God loves me, and he wants to finish the good work he started in me. He wants me to look more like Christ. Any day I say that I can do it myself, I'm a liar, and I pridefully say I don't need God. But any day I say I can't grow or change, but that God loves me as I am, I deny his good purpose and pretend as if God is not able to do far more than I can comprehend.
I'm not sure where that leaves me today. I still feel like a jigsaw puzzle of a thousand pieces of a clear blue sky, but I know that God is putting me back together, and I will trust my jagged edges in the palm of his hand.
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