Undeserving

In the past eight days, I've attended three memorial services. The first was for my grandpa, the second for a fellow student, and the third for the four people who were killed in the OSU Homecoming parade on Saturday. It made me really think about what I’m doing in every moment. I’m not guaranteed my next breath, but do I live like that’s the case? No. Not usually. I take the gift of life for granted every day.

When we lose people, we just want to know why lives like these have to end so suddenly. 

Why now? 

Why them?

The easy way out is to be angry. Yesterday, Adacia made some poor decisions. Many people’s lives are drastically different because of those decisions. Her life is drastically different because of those decisions. 

It’s easy to make her the one and only bad guy. We want to be angry with her. 

How could she do that? 

Why would she do that? 

Doesn’t she know the pain she’s caused? 

It’s natural to just hate those who mistreat us.

It’s natural to hate people like Adacia.

Tonight at the third memorial, a prayer vigil, a pastor quoted Jesus saying, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…” (Matthew 5:43-44).

It made me think, what if Jesus had hated his enemies? 

What would that mean for me?

It would be very, very bad news. 

Like my friend pointed out after the prayer vigil tonight...

We’re the enemy. 

We’re the ones who messed up. 

We’re the ones who should be punished for the innumerable sins we’ve committed against a holy and perfect God.

What if Jesus just loved God and hated us? I mean, He’s the only perfect One and definitely the only one worth loving. Why should He even glance down at us?

Would I want the wrath of God to be taken out on me? I can't even imagine what that would be like.

Thankfully this bad news isn’t true.

There's another way for those who trust in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Jesus doesn’t hate His enemies. Jesus loves His enemies. He loves them in this kind of way: 

He knew that humanity was fallen.

He knew that justice had to be served.

He knew that He had to come own from His perfect residence with the Father to solve our problem.

He knew He was here to die in our place.

He, a spotless, perfect sacrifice, was given the wrath of God when He was tortured and hung on a cross.

And He didn’t do anything wrong.

That should have been me on the cross. That should have been you. 

We're the ones who did wrong.

We’re the enemy who deserved to die for persecuting the Savior of the world.

So why wasn’t it us?

Well, God has a storehouse of a size we can’t fathom, and that storehouse is full of grace. The common definition of grace is “the unmerited favor of God toward man.” 

Unmerited. We did not do anything and cannot do anything to deserve grace. We are born not deserving it. One sin is enough to lose it, and we’ve sinned countless times.

God could have obliterated us in an instant. He could have hated us and wiped us out.

But He didn't do that. Instead He sacrificed His Son, giving Him the wrath.

When you think of Adacia Chambers, when you think of the pain she caused, when you want to hate her, stop and remind yourself of the grace and forgiveness you have been shown.

Remind yourself that you made mistakes that God didn’t have to forgive. He could have said, “Nope, that was the last straw, Ellen. You’re gone,” and He could have made me disappear to a place of eternal suffering. 

That’s what I really deserve.

But I know that that God made another Way.

I can recognize my helplessness and my imminent death, hopelessness, sorrow, and pain. I can acknowledge Jesus’ righteousness and trust that He’s the only One who can save and give eternal life, hope, joy, and peace.

God shouldn’t have taken a second look at us, but He sent Jesus to suffer that pain we deserved so we could join His family. Because of that, we have eternal life, hope, joy, and peace in the grace we receive. 

Let’s remember the forgiveness Jesus showed us, and pray to be forgiving with our enemies, with those who persecute us, with people like Adacia, with the people who seem to be undeserving of grace and forgiveness. 

Because we're undeserving, too. 

Volvering to Los Estados

Ah, man. Saying goodbye to 35 people you've spent time with every day for the past 8 months is no small feat. There are instant tears upon just seeing some people with a suitcase. I know I'll see some of them in just a couple of months, but there are still others who I  don't know when I'll see again.

Until the day of graduation, I didn’t think I had any feelings because everyone else was crying and I wasn’t. 

I wrote a note to every student. I didn’t cry. I reminisced on Facebook. I didn’t cry. I repeatedly thought about everyone leaving soon. I still didn’t cry.

But I found out something about myself when my roommate came to me teary-eyed after reading her note. If I see someone else crying, I cry. And I’ve cried and cried and cried these past 8 hours. Half of the Villa is gone. Half of my room is gone. And they just keep disappearing. And I have to wait around until tomorrow morning to come home to the States.

Part of me thinks "who on earth thought to make a program where you're forced to spend every waking moment together, then torture them by making them leave each other?” 

But obviously I see why. I’ve never lived with people my age for more than a few weeks at camp. I never thought I would really feel what leaving a part of myself in another country was like. I've never instantly clicked with people in less than 24 hours. I've never had a family of believers where I see every step of their growing and changing. I've never felt like I could just go to more than one person with absolutely anything. And if you told me I would love 35 people with every personality out there, I wouldn’t have believed you.

Although leaving this all behind in Costa Rica, I know that I have an insane network of hermanos all over the U.S. They may all be 21 and under. They may not have much real life under their belt. They may come across as immature and inexperienced. But I’ll be the first to tell you that the 29 gringo students that I lived with are going to do incredible things; things that I can’t begin to imagine. I have no doubt that good will come because of their love for the Lord.

And even though the closest students are 4 hours away, and the second closest are 10, I know that we will not lose our friendships. We can’t lose what we have in common, which has been my driving force through everyone leaving Costa Rica. 

We have the Holy Spirit connecting us as brothers and sisters, whether we’re on rocking chairs on the same porch or countries on different continents.

Seeking

I don’t have much to say about Costa Rica, other than the fact that I come home in less than two weeks! I’ve never been this excited and sad at the same time, but I’m preparing myself for coming back to the States and seeing everyone and starting college in less than 4 months. Wow, THAT’S terrifying. 

Now for the point of this blog post… For the past 10 days or so, I’ve been really intrigued by Greek and Hebrew word studies in the Bible. If I'm being honest, the MacArthur Bible Commentary and Zondervan NIV Exhaustive Concordance have been my closest companions (along with a couple of my GAP friends who have been patiently listening to me bask in the meanings of words in different contexts; thank you very much). To give you an idea of how excited I am, I’m using more than one pop-out color in this post, which makes it the only one, which is a big deal. 

About a month ago I noticed that I had been feeling withdrawn from a relationship with God. I hadn’t been feeling too different, but I just wasn’t growing or moving anywhere. I was waiting on God to show me or tell me something, ANYTHING, that I could do. And when nothing was happening, I decided I’d just read whatever I came across and hope it motivated me. So about three and a half weeks I went behind the other girls rooms and opened up a Bible that I just got. Our Bible teacher’s wife left a small NLT Bible here for the students when they moved back to the States. I’ve never had an NLT, but I claimed it then and gave it a go. So after I got situated and after a few minutes of flipping through pages trying to choose a book of the Bible, I decided on Psalms. And I opened to a page with a verse highlighted in blue. I read: 

“Search for the Lord and His strength, and keep on searching.” 

Psalm 105:4 (NLT)

In my few minutes of reading this little NLT, I realized that the words would probably be different in my ESV, so I read that version, too, which says:

“Seek the Lord and His strength; seek His presence continually.” 

Psalm 105:4 (ESV)

Hmm... Seek. That jogged my memory of another verse that I found last summer and loved:

“You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”

Jeremiah 29:13 (ESV)

I thought about those verses for about a week and a half, reading and rereading them, making notecards that said them, seeing how every Spanish and English version of the Bible worded it, and throughout it all, realizing that I couldn’t be a sitting duck waiting on God. I had to seek Him. I had to put effort in on my side, too. Why hadn’t I realized it sooner? I don’t know, but man, I’m glad I grabbed that little Bible in March and went back to the girls rooms that day a month later.

Well, I’ve only used a concordance a few times, once at camp and a little bit here, so I didn’t know much about using one. I went to the shelf and got the giant book. It’s bigger than my head and weighs about as much as a small child. To be honest, it was intimidating just to hold. But I flipped to the word “seek” and was inundated by 128 appearances of the word. I first skimmed down to Psalm 104:5. Both times in that verse it comes from the Hebrew bāqaš, which means to seek, search, look for, call to account, ask for, inquire about. 

Then I scanned my finger down to Jeremiah 29:13. That’s where I got excited. The first “seek” is the same Hebrew word, bāqaŝ. But the second one is different... Number 2011. It’s the word dāraš. It means to seek, inquire, consult, ponder, investigate. 

So I tried reading it like this:

“You will seek, search, look for, call to account, ask, inquire about me and find me when you seek, inquire, consult, ponder, investigate me with all your heart.”

Jeremiah 29:13 (ESV)

I can’t be idle and just expect God to do all the work in this relationship. I have to get off my seat and dāraš Him with all I’ve got so that I will bāqaŝ Him! I have to ponder Him. I have to investigate Him. And I have to consult Him. And all that searching will make me look, ask, and inquire about Him in my daily life. 

I don’t know if you think it’s as exciting as I do, but it got me really pumped up to keep looking at words. Since then I’ve looked at a lot and learned so much more than I ever thought I would. When I see a word that might have multiple meanings, I usually drop everything and get the concordance to look it up before I forget. I’ve even picked up a little (and I mean very, very, very little) bit of Hebrew and Greek along the way! If you have a lot of free time and a concordance, I will warn you of one thing: If you start, it’s hard to stop. There’s so much to learn from the original meanings of words in the Bible. It’s still blowing my mind! I love it!

That's all I got. I didn't try too hard on this post, so sorry for the grammatical nightmare that it is. If anyone wants to have concordance parties this summer hit me up. I got no plans.