We Don’t Deserve Anything

If it’s all true that Christ died wretched on a tree,

why do I ask for anything for me

A house, a spouse, all the things pale beside this misery

He endured.

The song sings “Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain, He washed it white as snow.”

So why do I want what I want?

Not even wrong things.

Sometimes the right ones are the hardest to repent of.

Because I put them up there on a pedestal as a way to find peace, as a way to be free.

This iron will sits hard in my centre, tries to justify it’s expectation, calling it hope.

I want what I want.

It’s layered, there are many justifiable reasons I yearn for the things I do (insert yours here …)

My reasons are empty balloons in the face of the cross.

Even full, they are still all just air.

We are lured, age after age, generations over and over into making our camp here,

adopting traditions of the tribes and forgetting that we are Leah* like holograms

meant to bring a Word to the world, good news peddlers, pilgrims, wanderers.

Bonhoeffer said “Christ bids us come and die.” (The Cost of Discipleship).

Larry Norman said, “This world is not my home, I’m just passing through…”.

Yet we are a people of roots.

We want to be sunk deep in the soil, be fastened to a location and call it HOME.

Wrong?

No. God promised His people that if they obeyed Him, He would bless them,

their wombs, crops, flocks and so forth.

I think this meant that they planted vineyards and had pastures,

built houses and stayed in a place.

So why do I feel this way?

Perhaps because it’s when, (even as the Isrealites fell into) prosperity comes, we (I) get lazy

and distracted.

We slide into what He warned about, the slippage into selfishness,

absorption with wants and culture,

rather than a continuous, grateful attachment to He who made it all

and in Whom we live and move and have our being.

Why do I think I should have, when most of the world has not.

Can the tide change and suddenly or gradually even,

I’m on the other side, picking through a garbage dump for my daily bread?

And if that is so, will I give thanks for the morsel I find?

I go through the motions;

prayer, self care, eat and clean this space, work, relate,

write words and garden, trying to produce some fruit.

Speaking of gardens there was a sower* who encountered various soil

as he toiled and I think I’ve found that mine might be thorny;

worries and wealth, creep stealthily until they choke the fruitful growth.

Open my eyes Lord, unwind the creeping vine that smothers the free and lovely

plans You have.

I confess, as I sit here, gazebo shading me from the heat, that some of the reason

for the gardens filling our yard is vanity and pride.

‘I can build that myself,’ as I gaze at a neighbors professional landscaping.

Some of it was just sheer lack of funds to do what they did.

And some of it was the arrogance to think I could achieve such a spectacular space

without the education, skills or funding.

Only God knows the deepest marrow of our motives.

Sometimes we build something though for the wrong ones and end up with a mess to maintain.

We become a slave rather than a joyful custodian of a blessing.

Lord have your way with my prone to wandering heart.

Rich Mullins sang “I’d rather fight you for something I don’t really want than take what you give that I need, and I beat my head against so many walls so I’m falling down, I’m falling on my knees …”.

I also know in my marrow that God is good and like a wonderful Father does,

He probes and prunes, too concerned with our eternity to leave us content in the now.

For this I’m so very grateful.

*Leah – Star Wars Princess Leah appeared as a hologram to bring a warning to the Rebels.