Where But For.

Do you ever feel like you live in two realities?
As in, the life you live everyday sometimes gets interrupted by other realities and yours feels a shattered after that?

My Hubbs and I frequent the gym these days, and at our gym every single machine is equipped with its own TV. Now, Hubbs and I don't have TV at our house in this season of life, so it is kind of our only view (besides the internet) into the outside world these days.

And this is precisely where my reality tends to get shattered.

 Most often I can be seen running full speed ahead and lip syncing to whatever is buzzed into my ear buds. Or sometimes you will catch me punching the air...while running... as if I were training in martial arts. How embarrassing. More often than not, though, I am flipping back and forth between the news, the Food Network, PBS,and Discovery on the now rare-to-me television. Quite the spectrum of interests, I know. And if you are curious, the answer is Yes. I am the only one in the entire gym watching Bob Ross paint "Happy Little Trees" while on the stair stepper.

But last week my little quirky gym habits were disrupted not once, but twice.
Two Sundays ago Hubbs and I went to the gym and we had the place virtually to ourselves because everybody else was with their friends watching The Big Game rather than being at the gym watching The Big Game without their friends.
I don't really care for either of the teams that were playing but the last few minutes were crazy and I was enjoying myself with the continuous back-and-forth.
Until.

UNTIL my happy little football watching heart got broken when men who get paid to throw a football around started beating each other like pinatas.
I immediately hit the emergency stop button on my treadmill because, well, I had burst into tears.
Hand over the mouth, whispering "No, no no," I was trying to stop the waterworks because believe it or not, crying at the gym is more embarrassing than punching the air while running.

Are you serious? Who are these babies? BEATING EACH OTHER. The worst part (well there are a lot of "worst part"s) being that tens of millions of people were watching this thuggery that is becoming more and more common place in "the game."

*eyes rolling*

Children have posters of these jokers on their bedroom walls.

Blast.

A couple days later then, it happens again; my reality got burst into. News of that evil act done by ISIS comes across the news feed and I physically have to look away. I cannot watch, it is so heinous.
BURNING PEOPLE ALIVE IN CAGES.

For the rest of the night my heart is absolutely devastated.
~~~


We have found the church we will be attending for our brief stay in this city and we have a Sunday School teacher that we just love. A native of Northern Ireland (remember my time there?!), he brings such wit and wonderfully non-American points of view to the conversation that we can't tell whether we like the church so much or just our Sunday School teacher. Ha.

Anyway, the other day we were discussing the topic of Total Depravity, which, for brevity's sake, I will just tell you means that there is Absolutely No Good In You. It's a big theology for Christianity, a tenet of what we believe (go study it), but can sometimes be a little hard to swallow.

Because to put the boots of it to the ground means that we are not better in the sight of God than any person, terrorist, child, or dictator on the planet. And that hurts my ego more than I want it to.

"All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God," Romans says. And the word ALL is inclusive. It means me, it means you. Jesus himself says that "None are good but God alone."

So we were talking about the implications to our daily life of believing this and...to be honest...it makes me swallow hard the lump in my throat.
Because there I was at the gym, trying not to cry for the second time that week, having to turn my head away because I could not stand to see the sight of the evil that was coming across the screen, all the while remembering this truth and having to accept this recently talked of fact that I have within ME the capability to do everything those terrorists were doing.

Everything.

Because it's true.

And it's why we have a phrase that says "Where but for the grace of God go I." Because we ALL can go there.

Yikes.

It's why we have reason to praise the Lord. If he has saved you, he has rescued you from going there.

A couple days later I was thinking about all of this as I sat in my living room and was journaling to the Lord. I wonder what can be done about all the evil, all the terror. I pray about it, but it all seems so removed. It's not in my reality. It's a situation that can only really be rescued by Christ, for you cannot sweet talk evil... you either destroy it or it will destroy you. And only Jesus can destroy evil. The situation so desperately needs him.

And as I continued this discussion with God, I looked across my living room and there sat this chair that I want to reupholster.

I am caught off guard by the transitory nature of my thoughts that not two minutes after I am praying for a totally barbaric and depraved situation across the ocean I find myself praying for God's guidance in how to recover a chair.

"Does this need to be prayed for, too?" I thought rather sheepishly. "Doesn't God have bigger problems to deal with than me coordinating our living room furniture?"

I feel hard-hearted even asking for his help with those. Surely I don't need God for this one.

And my things, really, are so small. So insignificant. So innocent I don't need to bother the Almighty and ask for his help with those.

"So...not evil," I hear my sin nature whisper into my ear...

I turn back to my Bible and read this:
"How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death so that we might serve the living God!" (Hebrews 9:14)

Acts of death? I ask myself. What acts of death have I done? That doesn't seem quite the appropriate phrase for someone like me, does it? Certainly I can't be that bad that my acts would lead to death....


Fortunately the Holy Spirit snapped me out of my self-induced ego inflation at that point.


I look over and see my chair that needs to be reupholstered...and I think about the laundry I need to fold...and the wedding thank yous I need to write...and I see the piano I should play more often. All these things are in MY reality.

Is it possible that these types of things, too, if but for the Grace of God would have been the acts that lead to MY death? Because the truth is that no, I probably never would have burned someone alive in a cage (although my total depravity could have had me do that), but the reality is that those kinds of people are not the only ones who will be eternally separated from God.

Reupholsterers and bakers and laundry maids and women who take cinnamon rolls to the neighbors and people who play piano---all those kinds of people will get the justice due them in hell, too. Right next to un-repentant, un-regenerated terrorists.
Where but for the Grace of God go I.

Because my acts, innocent though they may seem, can separate me from God just the way NFL thuggery and terrorists and all those "bad people" are separated from God.

I think back to me thinking that I didn't needed to pray for God's help with my reupholstering. Isn't that the beginning of an eternity separated from God?

Isn't that the starting point of all the evil acts? All the acts that lead to death? Believing that there are areas of our life we don't need God in? Thinking that we know best, we can figure it out, we have it all under control, we have a better truth found outside of his Word, we don't really need to play by his rules? Isn't that the heart of the totally depraved?

"No thank you, God. We have got this. We know best. We can do it ourselves."



Me and the terrorist thugs alike.

Purify our hearts, Lord Jesus. We so desperately need you in all these situations. In ones of terror and ones of daily keeping our houses.


Because where, but for your grace, Lord, go I.