A Letter to the Dirty

Some days I feel like there is so much to say and not enough words to express the truth that I want everyone to know.  I start writing and nothing comes out the way I want it to as a jumble of different thoughts collide on the page, fighting for priority.  So this week I wrestled with what exactly I needed to write about.

I decided on this, a letter to the deluded who think they are disqualified from being desired.

Treasured One, 

You are not defined by your behavior.  You look at yourself, your addictions and failures and I all you see is a tangled mess of something that’s not good enough.  Not good enough to be loved by another human being.  Not good enough to achieve your dreams.  Not good enough to be a leader.  Not good enough to be a friend.  Not good enough to be a father or mother.  Most certainly, not good enough for God.  You look at yourself and that’s what you see… not enough. 

So then beautiful things come into your life and you reject them.  Moments of joy and glimpses of contentment peek into your darkness and you sabotage them as you remind yourself, “I am a disgusting mess; I don’t deserve that.”  Deeper and deeper you tread into destruction as you listen to the voice convince you that’s who you are and that’s who you will always be. 

And you believe it because that’s all you have ever known. 

I’m here to tell you… 

THAT.

IS.

A.

LIE. 

The wonder of grace is in its scandalous pursuit of people like you and me whose reality is more often depravity than holiness.  That’s what makes God so wonderful really, that He would chose a whore to call His bride.  

Jesus. 

The God who chose to enter this world of vicious aggression in the most vulnerable of ways, born in the fragility of a baby.  The God who walked this earth with blistered feet and chose the misunderstood life of a rebel rabbi.  The God who reached down and washed the feet of his best friends even when they didn’t understand why.  The God who embraced the people that ruined His reputation and dirtied his robes but rebuked the “holy” heroes. 

We expect that God to look at us and expect us to clean up before He can embrace us?

He can touch diseased dead and stand confident before demons but He cowers away from us?  Do we really believe that? 

He willingly walked to His death, facing excruciating and unbearable torture, because He so desperately wanted to embrace the very men who plunged the nails into his wrists. 

That’s how much He loves us. 

Us. 

Broken us. 

You look in the mirror and say, “I am a disgusting mess; I don’t deserve that.”   You think grace is cheap.  Don’t you see, the creator of this universe paid for it with the life of His son!

You have already been cleaned. 

Yes, you fight with your addiction and your brokenness while you sparkle of holiness paid for by Christ… because He wants so desperately for you to know you are loved.  He needs nothing from you and gives everything to you because He is completion and you are need.  That’s the God that He has always been, that He always will be, because He is full and we are empty.

There are no words I can write, no eloquence that I can speak with, to make you believe in the splendor of grace.  But I hope that you do because there is peace in it.  Because it’s been paid for.  Because you are clean now.  Because all He wants is to love you, right here, right now, in this moment and all that follow it.  He sees all that you are and calls you “Perfect, Pure, Mine.”  

Be broken.  Be you.  Be loved.