You.
You with your blue eyes and charming smile and quick mind.
You with your man hands and deep voice.
You call and we wrestle.
Like Jacob wrestled the angel that night.
Tonight you call and we wrestle.
Your questions about God and heaven and hell and security and faith they come and I can hear it in your voice- you are drowning.
You so much like Peter- Peter who confidently walked out on the water and challenged the soldiers to a fight in the garden. Peter who looked and said with his own words that Jesus was the messiah the one history and humanity had been waiting, preparing, leading to, longing for.
And I hear your words my Peter-man they speak confidently of the miracles but now you look to the waves of life, the storms the suffering and you sink. You my sweet Peter-man feel the severing that sin has worked you feel it deeply, soul deep and you morn and lament the sin and the suffering and the sores that seem to break open every time you open the good book.
And your mouth it forms questions and your confident statements are now questionable and you question.
And you ask.
And we, we wrestle.
And I tell you this questioning will work out for your confidence, because what has not been tested can not be trusted.
And there....
There it is.
Trust.
You tell me.
And I know.
I know because I have sat where you sit.
Only you sit in the April air on metal bleachers and I sat in a small room in a high back padded chair.
And my eyes burned holes into her and my teeth clenched as she told me to trust.
Through tight teeth I offered a dare with two words.
They had been words that had live deep inside of me and had never seen light. But sitting there with her they came out. With all the anger and confusion and fear and doubt they came out
"Prove. It."
And I expected to break her but she didn't miss a breath she simple said confidently and with no regret.
"I can't"
You would think I would have been rocked to the core and for a time I was.
But my two words and her two they began to push me towards The Word. And with David I began to cry from my bed "when my heart is overwhelmed lead me to the rock that is higher than I."
And sweet Peter-man I did cry, hot angry, fearful tears. And like Peter I sank into the water. And I guarded against questions and sorrows and heart breaking because they water filled my lungs and threatened to take me to eternity- what ever that meant- where ever that was.
And as the water filled me I thought to myself
"if he is the water of life truly he is drowning me!"
And it fit with the god I had created in my head. Because I used reason and logic like you use now. Only our human minds are limited and have only so much reason and logic to work with and our god can not be independent of what we have known and experienced.
So I made him like I knew man to be- cruel, unloving, evil, unkind and I reasoned these things had to come from some where they must have come from the creator.
And you, you think the same don't you?
Yes, in our wrestling you told me you think that.
And I want to tell you Peter-man that this god you have created is not trust worthy you must do away with him as quickly as he comes to mind. Do. Not. Trust. Him.
Use your mind to reason and logic this story- the God son came to earth and wrapped himself in complex DNA. They thought he had come to save them from Rome. Much like you think he has come to save you from acts of imperfection. But this God now man went instead to the tree he had grown bloodied and bruised...
You feel this bruising don't you? You have been beaten by memories of your past until your body aches from regret and your heart bleeds from being dragged and weighed down by condemnation.
This Jesus was condemned for what you had done, will do. He was abused and abandoned. For you. For. His. Glory.
And you, you know what it's like to be abandoned and abused and you know what it's like to abuse. You have received the beating from another man's hands and you have used your very hands to bloody your fellow man.
But think of our God-man the one broken and hanging. And all of your sin and your shame that you should have to carry- oh and how you insist on carrying it- but he took it on his body and His dad crushed His Son with your sin.
You know the crushing weight of that sin. I am watching it crush you now. But I am telling you about the Rock that was crushed and now stand solid in victory. And he is our victory Rock and when our heart is overwhelmed we cry to him.
And who would make this up?
What man would fabricate a god that would rip the fabric of the temple top to bottom and give us full and equal access simply through faith that he is lord? We would not reward ourself with something so great for so little effort. Something so out of our control our tangible world.
What man comforts himself with a beaten and humiliated god? But what comfort there is that our God knows the tenderness of open wounds and the time it takes to heal. He has felt and been the humiliated and humbled human.
When would a man sit down and create a god that triumphed through submitting to torture?
And your soul is tormented by the thought that you will not taste his triumph. But he has offered it to you and he has promised that with your mustard seed faith he will keep you and he has sealed you and will continue to make you look more like him.
Him who looked black and blue while on the earth him bloodied and broken here in humanity. Humiliated and humbled.
So don't be surprised my sweet Peter-man when you see marks of battering from the battle.
Our brother he came for those marks he came and was marked by them himself.
He binds up broken hearts and sets captives free he is near to the broken hearted and those that are crushed in spirit.
So this crushing weight you feel under the water, Peter-man, it is a place for God to meet you.
And what religion would make that up? That god would stoop to be with captives and crushed men and sinners forgiven.
Who but God could marry mercy and justice?
He would have been just as glorified to condemn you and crush you under your own sin but instead he delighted to crush the son and the son endured because of the joy he saw. He came up with this whole saving humanity thing.
The question really is not then why is there sin but rather why is there salvation?
I will not pretend to have a solid, proven logical answer but I will tell you why he says there is salvation.
Because he loves you.
And this love, we have no reason for it.
Your reason and logic don't even know how to comprehend what depth of love would lower himself to our world so we could be seated highbin heavenly places. Equally sharing Jesus's access to God.
And so in the mornings know Peter-man that I will be asking him to show you his steadfast love- his love with no exit strategy. And he will show you. And you will be amazed.
You.
You with your skeptical eyes and and confused mind.
You with your man hands and deep voice.
You ask too.
And we will watch him work a miracle in you.
And this, this I will confidently expect to hear from you;
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of sympathy (pity and mercy) and the God [Who is the Source] of every comfort (consolation and encouragement),
Who comforts (consoles and encourages) us in every trouble (calamity and affliction), so that we may also be able to comfort (console and encourage) those who are in any kind of trouble or distress, with the comfort (consolation and encouragement) with which we ourselves are comforted (consoled and encouraged) by God.
For just as Christ’s [[a]own] sufferings fall to our lot [b][as they overflow upon His disciples, and we share and experience them] abundantly, so through Christ comfort (consolation and encouragement) is also [shared and experienced] abundantly by us.
But if we are troubled (afflicted and distressed), it is for your comfort (consolation and encouragement) and [for your] salvation; and if we are comforted (consoled and encouraged), it is for your comfort (consolation and encouragement), which works [in you] when you patiently endure the same evils (misfortunes and calamities) that we also suffer and undergo.
And our hope for you [our joyful and confident expectation of good for you] is ever unwavering (assured and unshaken); for we know that just as you share and are partners in [our] sufferings and calamities, you also share and are partners in [our] comfort (consolation and encouragement).
For we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about the affliction and oppressing distress which befell us in [the province of] Asia, how we were so utterly and unbearably weighed down and crushed that we despaired even of life [itself].
Indeed, we felt within ourselves that we had received the [very] sentence of death, but that was to keep us from trusting in and depending on ourselves instead of on God Who raises the dead.
For it is He] Who rescued and saved us from such a perilous death, and He will still rescue and save us; in and on Him we have set our hope (our joyful and confident expectation) that He will again deliver us [from danger and destruction and [c]draw us to Himself],
