We trip, fall, and land in the black, but with grace, a friend comes to show a pinpoint of light.
I knew what he had done, but I still loved him. I told him I loved him too. He found it hard to take that he was worthy of anyone’s love. But in all honesty, he was a sinner like me. We were both beggars trying to find bread.
Christianity is one beggar telling another beggar where he found bread. D.T. Niles
He sat there recalling his crimes and the pain he had caused others. He needed to, and I prayed that he would feel both the embrace of my compassion and the compassion of Christ around his heart.
We had some bread, some grape juice, and a little feast of forgiveness and reconciliation. Two sinners both needing a spark of hope.
He was appalled by what he had done, and I knew that forever this would be part of the Cross he would have to carry.
Facing the Black
My most read post here on Turning the Page is Take my Life God, I Want to die.
It’s the most read because people worldwide type ‘God I want to die’ into their google search engine, bringing them to this site. It might be a momentary instance of despair or a well-laid, entrenched thinking pattern.
Regardless, they are in pain. An unbearable feeling is flooding through the soul, and they want it to stop. They want to die, but I think it’s more likely they simply want the pain to end.
They are coming to an awareness of the Cross they are carrying.
I read this quote about what Jesus meant when he said that those who follow him need to take up their Cross.
The Cross Jesus asked us to carry is yourself.
It’s all the pain inflicted on you in your past
and all the pain you’ve inflicted on others.
Thomas Keating
That’s a very heavy cross. Uncomprehensably heavy.
If I were to fully realize all the pain inflicted on me by others and all the pain I have inflicted on others, even a taste of it would trigger a desire to die.
It’s the moment of appalling awareness we find in
- David – I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Psalm 51:3
- Job – I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself,
and repent in dust and ashes. Job 42:5,6 - Prodigal son – I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. Luke 15:18
- Isaiah – Then I said, “My doom is sealed, for I am a foul-mouthed sinner, a member of a sinful, foul-mouthed race.” Isaiah 6:5
- Brennan Manning
I’ve been a priest, then an ex-priest.
Husband, then ex-husband.
Amazed crowds one night and lied to friends the next.
Drunk for years, sober for a season, then drunk again.
I’ve been John the beloved, Peter the coward, and Thomas the doubter all before the waitress brought the check.
I’ve shattered every one of the Ten Commandments six times Tuesday.
And if you believe that last sentence was for dramatic effect, it wasn’t. Brennan Manning All is grace
It’s the darkness that seems to keep on getting darker and darker as you go deeper into the cave. It entombs you. Buries you alive.
It’s the appalling awareness and weight of a cross too heavy for anyone to bear. And we need to go there if we are ever to fully comprehend the delight of grace and forgiveness.
Into the dark hole, we find a vicarious (acting or done for another) one. One that carries the Cross of the worlds (including my own) crimes against humanity. Past, present, and future. On that Cross, he dies, but there is a resurrection Sunday.
I am appalled by the depth of how I stray, but I am delighted by the gift of a little light into my dark hole.
Finding some Light
Justice – what I deserve
Mercy – not getting what I deserve
Grace – getting what I don’t deserve.
We can only delight and dance in grace when we fully know the appalling darkness of our sin.
The prodigal son’s older brother couldn’t dance and feast with his grace-filled father because he had not wholly entered into his blackness. He noticed the specks in others’ eyes but failed to notice the log jam in his own.
Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?
Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye?
You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.
Matthew 7:3-5
If I am to connect with a broken man or woman appalled by their sin, then I must also be appalled by my own. I need to know my own’ log in the eye’. It’s level ground at the foot of the Cross. Everyone must come broken to find some bread and wine.
We judge according to what we see, but God judges the heart.
God knows the truest state of the heart.
We judge like the older brother, but God is so excited to have us home.
What is the greatest of all sins?
It’s all black. Every momentary shift of gaze away from God is as black as coal.
Sin is not a distance, it is a turning of our gaze in the wrong direction. Simone Weil, Waiting for God
But perhaps the greatest of all sins is pride.
According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere flea bites in comparison: it was through pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind…
… it is pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began. C.S. Lewis
Pride is your greatest enemy, humility is your greatest friend. John R.W. Stott
To think I know better.
To sit in dust speck judgment of others.
To sit above and not beside.
To speak when I could listen.
To grumble when I could grieve.
The people that concern me the most
The people that concern me the most are those that have formed a daily self-flagellation habit of darkness gazing.
All they do is focus on the Cross of hurts done to them and the hurts they have done to others.
It’s a grip of despair and darkness. They have done this for so long that the brain sees it as normal. The firing pathways see this as the way to live life.
A lifestyle of self-abuse, self-loathing, self-condemnation, and self-death has no room for any light to enter its hole.
All one can do is enter, try to understand, and perhaps point them to a resurrection light shining out of a dark tomb—a gardener with a wound on his side and nail holes in his hands.
We stand and together follow him out of our dark hole.
Questions?
Comments?
Email me 🙂📨
barry@turningthepage.co.nz
Quotes to consider
- The reason we sin and suffer is not so much because we are weak but simply because we are human. To be human means to be imperfect and in process. Richard Rohr -Job and the Mystery of Suffering
- Sin is not a distance, it is a turning of our gaze in the wrong direction. Simone Weil, Waiting for God
- I am inclined to believe that God’s chief purpose in giving us memory is to enable us to go back in time so that if we didn’t play those roles right the first time round, we can still have another go at it now…. Another way of saying it, perhaps, is that memory makes it possible for us both to bless the past, even those parts of it that we have always felt cursed by, and also to be blessed by it … what the forgiveness of sins is all about. Frederick Buechner
- The men and women who are truly filled with light are those who have gazed deeply into the darkness of their own imperfect existence. Brennan Manning
- Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light. Brené Brown
Further reading
Barry Pearman
Photo by Vadim Danilov on Unsplash
