How does one tell this story?
The decades come and go so quickly. We only get so many of them to live on this earth.
Do we make them count or squander them away?
It can be both.
Between the age of 18 and 28 I’d say I squandered that decade away.
It wasn’t my wisest of times. It definitely held a lot of growth opportunities.
Some, get pockets and or the full picture of that time in my life.
The rest of you get the broader brush stroke of it all. “It was a dark decade”
Jesus knows that full story, my story.
He says “I made that time count”, even though I see it as squandering it away.
He knows that part of my life will be used to help someone else through something.
Weight of it all.
On one hand, there are those who grow up going to church, never straying from their faith.
Then, there are the ones who leave the church, claiming they’re waking up for the first time, or finally free from some dangerous cult.
Lastly, there are the people who stray from the church, who may experience a dark decade, or more.
Eventually realizing that what they thought they were missing, what they attempted to find in the world, they can’t seem to find it. – This is where I fit in, this is where my story stems from.
That time away, it weighs you down, the things you seek in the world, the “gaps” you attempt to fill. The searching for joy in all the wrong places…
Those
“ifs”.
If I can just get more _____, do more _____ find more _____.
“then”
I’ll be more; happy, content, at peace…
Yet the farther one searches in the world the darker life becomes.
The gaps can become voids. The choices are each heavier than the last.
We are all sinners, and the weight of sin is death.
Since the beginning we’ve sinned, and therefore none of us make it out of this world alive.
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 6:23
Life and Light and a way out of the Darkness…
Things you don’t see while you’re in the middle of it.
The light, the little specks, the flickers, the areas in which Jesus shows you mercy.
They can be missed in the moment.
I know I didn’t see it until years later.
Until I’d come to realize that the only true thing I was missing in my life was Jesus.
That I wouldn’t heal those scars the darkness can bring, the bumps and bruises you get from stumbling without the light. Those wouldn’t come to an end until I gave it all over to Jesus.
In hindsight, Jesus never left my side. He’d place people in my life to steer me gently back onto a path a little less dangerous than the one I was turning down. It was always my choice, but he’d send friends to guide me, to give me options, (They’re the little specks and flickers of light). I can tend to be a little stubborn though and want to work through my own problems without the help of others. I thought I could do it on my own.
I’ve seen Jesus’ relentless love for us. I’ve experienced his going after the one. His footsteps in the sand.
I’ve felt wholly loved by Him even in my brokenness. I’ve continued to be broken as He alone heals me.
Because no matter how hard you search, you cannot find complete healing within the world.
The darkness will always be in the deepest corners.
There is no escaping the darkness on this earth.
Even after you’ve accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior.
It’s a constant daily choice, to put off your old life and choose the new life.
The New Life
Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ! – assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
Ephesians 4:17-24
The Way, The Truth, The Life
It could be a dark hour, a dark day, a dark decade(s) for you. This is true for me, for you, for anyone who walks this world. The longer you walk as the gentiles do, the people of the world. The darker your understanding becomes. The harder one’s heart turns.
The Way, The Truth, The Life, is in Jesus.
He is the only one you can turn to.
To put off that worldly self and to put on your new self.
Created in the image of God.
Out of Darkness and Into Light I’m running
It is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus that gives us hope, life and salvation.
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6
Sin has lost its power,
death has lost its sting.
From the grave You’ve risen
VICTORIOUSLY!
(Lyrics by Charlie Hall)
Jesus died on a cross to save us from our darkness.
That is one glorious gift that is worth living for!
This is the story one tells, not of the worldly life that once darkened their understanding and hardened their heart.
But the story of the kindness that awakened (me) us all.
Jesus is the kindness and grace.
Jesus is the Way, the Truth, the Life.
Jesus is the story to tell.
If you’re a Lutheran LSB hymn 566 – By Grace I’m Saved. That is your title for “if this blog were a song!”