Last night, before I went to sleep, I started praying. And as I prayed out loud in the darkness, talking to Jesus, I just started crying because Jesus is so beautiful, and this life so undeserved, and His love so unimaginable. I cried because of my Lord's beauty, and I cried because of my sinfulness and forgetfulness, the undeservedness of my spirit, and the wide far reaching love of God towards me that made me His child. I saw His beauty, and it hurt.
I had to get up and write my thoughts down. This is the thought process that went into my prayer to Jesus.
“Because when you are stripped of everything, you realize that all you have is Christ, and that He is enough.” -(a young lady who is missionary to a dangerous Muslim country)
When everything I have is stripped away, even when everything I know and hold dear is taken from me, I’m still rich and blessed beyond my highest dreams. If my family was torn away, if I lost even my best friends, if everything I ever dreamed about was ripped from me, if I wandered the streets with no home and no protection, I would still be blessed beyond comprehension. Because I have Christ, and He is enough. He is enough for me.
He is enough for me? Christ Jesus, God’s son, is enough for me. His unsurpassable love for me is enough. His arms holding me is enough. His unimaginable beauty is enough. His holiness and His purity and His complete and absolute deity are enough. His wide grace is enough, and it reaches me, no matter in what depth of low despicable nasty filth I wallow. His beauty and grace and love are more than enough for me.
What is earth? A shadow, a breath, a vapor. It is nothing; it is a wind that is fleeing away. Everything on earth is a passing, unimportant, soon to be not even vaguely remembered thing. What do I really have? I have God. I have all of Him; I am His and He is mine.
If I cannot feel Him fully right now, it is because I am a flawed mortal body, not assimilated to the wonders of heaven, still earthly, not heavenly. But when this shadow passes, and I am in heaven, I will feel Him. I will feel HIM. I will see His beauty, His unimaginable deity. I will see Him, and touch Him, and dwell with Him. I will deeply feel His presence. What other wealth is there besides this? God, beautiful, supremely holy, unsurpassably lovely and pure, is mine. The One who held out His hands to me, His nail scarred and beautiful hands, and who loved me, and chose me, and accepted me, sought me out and drew me and unconditionally cared for me, the One who wrote my name in the book of life, who formed me and bought me with love.
Me. He bought me. What am I? I am nothing, absolutely nothing. Less than nothing, I am pride, ungratefulness, vanity, lies, abject sinfulness and disobedience. And this thing, this nasty unholy impure thing was seen, and chosen, and drawn, and unconditionally loved and purified by the most Holy of Holies, God Himself. I can’t even imagine it.
This is what God is. He is a God who pours love into something so worthless as me, so that when He has purified me I will reflect His glory. This is happiness. This is ultimate fulfillment. This is love, and peace, and joy forevermore. For no reason other than love, God gave me everything in exchange for nothing. I have the right and duty to be the most joyful, happy, boundlessly passionately excited and changed human that ever walked this earth. With no family, no friends, no earthly possessions, with every supposed need completely stripped away, I am still the most blessed of beings. Because I have Christ, and He is enough. He is more than enough for me.
