I sat in this same chair about 12 hours ago frozen in fear and self-pity. I was headed downtown to get a replacement driver’s license because I lost my other one. I thought Carey was going to be off today, and when a client moved their cleaning to next Tuesday I had no work today. So goes the life of a self-employed housekeeper. I love housekeeping. I love my daughter who turned 12 today, but I don’t love depression. Depression is relentless, hard and unsolvable. I’m not looking for any answers as I told my Covenant Group a decade ago. They respected that, and there’s not a day goes by I don’t thank my heavenly Father for that decade we spent with the Family of God at Woodmont Hills, and now God has picked right back up with the Family of God at Donelson.
I realize life has chronic pain we learn to deal with, and I realize that life is not fair, but there is a growing hope and striving within me that keeps me from taking my own life because I’m here to give you hope. I’ve known people to take their own lives, and honestly I can’t blame them. I continue in the vain I’ve conjured, not because I’m able, but because God is able through me to conjure a hope that is not of this world. Jesus sweat drops of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane because of the stress He was under. Scholars have argued what that Greek means, but I’m of the persuasion that they were actually drops of blood as Mr. Gibson portrayed in The Passion of the Christ. His pain is what sustains me in the trials I must bear. In some way they release me from the pain and burden. I know they do for eternity because they are the payment for the dept my sin has incurred. Financial legalize is perfect metaphor for what happened at the cross – the Golgotha cross. There were thousands of crosses in the time of Roman rule, but only one set us free from the strongholds that bind us now. May the Via Dolorosa and the path to the cross for our LORD always be in view as we celebrate the freedom from sin and unity with Father that we do.
The strongholds that anchor us to slave masters that do not sleep are nothing compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus our LORD. Martyr after martyr proves this, and in our western mindset there is nothing in all of the retail locations that can fill the void like that. We’ve been put here for 70, maybe 80 years if we’re strong, but those are not even a fraction to surpassing greatness of eternity with a Father who knit us together in our mother’s wombs.
To her who has ears.
