A great Reflections for Ragamuffins by Manning I had to share this morning…
HIS PASSION:
Through His passion and death, Jesus carried away the essential sickness of the human heart and broke forever the deadly grip of hypocrisy on our souls. He has robbed our loneliness of its fatal power by traveling himself to the far reaches of loneliness…He has understood our ignorance, weakness, and foolishness and granted pardon to us all (“Forgive them, Father, they do not know what they are doing”). He has made his pierced heart a safe place for every defeated cynic, hopeless sinner and self-loathing derelict across the bands of time. God reconciled all things, everything in heaven and everything on earth, when he made peace by his death on the cross (Col. 1:20).
That cross reveals that Jesus has conquered sin and death and that nothing, absolutely nothing, can separate us from the love of Christ. Neither the impostor nor the Pharisee, neither the lack of awareness nor the lack of passion, neither the negative judgments of others nor the debased perception of ourselves, neither our scandalous past nor our uncertain future, neither the power struggles in the church nor the tensions in our marriage, not fear, guilt, shame, self-hatred, or even death can tear us away from the love of God, made visible in Jesus the Lord.
Listening to the faint heartbeat of the dying Rabbi is a powerful stimulus to the recovery of passion.
“I will give them singleness of heart and action, so that they will always fear me for their own good and the good of their children after them.” Jeremiah 32:39
Where have you seen God's grace in your life today?