My hope

Where do I start? I want to tell you all about Jesus. About how He died on a cross and why. That we're broken people. That we do self-destructive things because it's our nature. The law of entropy - any system left to itself breaks down. And we're in ourselves.

But we're that way only because we turned away from God. You see, nature was never intended to be a closed system. God always meant to infuse Himself into His creation. Every second of every day, He would feed some of Himself into the universe. Almost like electricity powers our homes. Constant regeneration. Because that's God's nature. He loves, with great generosity. He redeems because He loves. He creates. He builds.

We were always meant to reflect God. We are His image in this universe - like our own image in the mirror. So we feel like He feels. God feels joy, sadness, anger. The entire emotional spectrum. What happens when someone hurts us? We get angry. When someone violates the boundaries that we raised? We get angry. God does too. And I know that I violate those boundaries every day in a million different ways. From wanting to scream at my wife, to impatience with my autistic daughter, to just plain old wishing I had more. And many other ways that I don't even know. All the little slights or things I don't do of which I'm never even aware.

Even when our spouse doesn't realize they hurt us, it still makes us angry. Because we're like God. Even though I don't know, He's still feeling anger. Anger has to be spent. It can't be bottled, because that eats us from the inside out. God spends His anger. He has to let it out. Imagine what the God who created everything with mere words can do. The soul crushing anger that He would let loose. We couldn't take it. We would disintegrate - mind, body, and spirit.

The Bible describes it as "the mountains melting like wax". The mountains! I'm not that tough. And God knows all of this. He knows that we can't bear His wrath. He knows that it would completely destroy us to see all that we've done. To know all of the ways that we failed. All of the others that we've hurt. Shoot, knowing our own pain is hard enough.

And God came up with a solution. The only person who could ever endure His anger and survive is Him. So God gave up a part of Himself. That part of Him lived in a physical body, in a mud house. Ate food, drank water and wine, slept, pooped, everything we do. And lived a perfect life. Not a dream, not pampered, a life without ever hurting anyone else. A life that was like the one we were supposed to have. Complete and total obedience. No rebellion, no fear, no hopelessness.

And God let Him die. Hung Him on a cross. And completely let Him have it. God let loose all the anger, all of the wrath, everything He could dish out. The granddaddy of all hissy fits on a cosmic scale. God let go and He threw everything He could dish out at this one person - who stood there and took it. Without ever flinching, without ever protesting. God accused Him of every wrong I've ever done in my life. Of every stray thought, every desire for revenge, every time I failed. God just stuck it on that Guy and blew all of that rage in His face. And that Man took it. That Man said "You're right, I'm guilty of all of those things". God went through every person who ever lived. He called my name, your name, everyone. And when He was done, after all of the anger had come pouring out, all the yelling ended, all of the beating stopped, and His rage was spent, God saw love.

When we let our anger out, it leaves us empty. Spent is the word I think of. Drained. A vacuum never stays empty. Something else comes in to fill it. Since God is love, He only had love to fill that space.

And He saw Himself, that part of Him that did nothing and still took it. He felt pride. The kind of pride you feel when your kid does something amazing. That deep feeling of love and you just want to give them everything. This is what God sees when He looks at me. He sees Jesus, His Son, that Man, with eyes of love and pride. And every time He looks at me, all He can remember is how much His Son means to Him.

This is my hope. This is the only thing that I have left. Through all of this divorce, through all of the doubt, all of the times I wonder if it's me, am I doing the right thing? I remember, I know, I believe, that He sees Jesus - not my sin, not my brokenness, not the hardness of my heart that contributed to a broken marriage. He sees the Christ. He sees the anger already spent. And I survived - Jesus survived. All He knows for me is love.

This world has so many problems. But one day He promised a new world. A world where He gives me my name - the name He created me to have. All because one Man took it for me. This is my faith. This is the God who waits for me. This is the God who waits for you.