Entwined

Life hurts.
We are born into the world, condemned by the reality of Adam’s failure. This is a difficult concept to accept, even if you understand it fully. The first man, molded of dust, and vitalized with God’s own breath…sinned, and screwed up the universe for the remainder of earth’s existence. God put a human on this earth, and a helper. Everything was pure. One small, selfish decision – probably just a shrug from Adam – changed the relationship between God and man for thousands of years afterwards. WHAT?!
What in God’s name was Adam thinking?
If he was living today, it would be hard not to throw a fist in his face. We’re paying the consequences for his actions. That’s why life hurts. If you want to get ultra-specific, then yes, it was Adam who screwed up our reality today. But if any one of us had been in his position, we’d have done no better. It was MAN who did this.
And THAT’S why life hurts so bad.
God knows all this. He’s omniscient. It’s his nature to know it. So he addressed the problem, and sent ambassadors. A collection of supernaturally gifted individuals, created perhaps solely for the purpose of delivering messages from God to His children. Guess what?
We killed them.
They were called the prophets, and we, stupid mankind, murdered them. Again, we have screwed up our universe. This is getting out of hand. How many servants can the Owner of a vineyard continue to send? Ten, twenty, a hundred? No. The blood that has been shed must be reconciled. Wiped clean from the Creator’s dearest: His precious, precious children. So he does what must be done. He sends His Son.
The Son is on an epic mission. To do what Adam had neglected to do at the dawn of reality. To save mankind. Guess what?
We killed him, too.
But God knows this, and has known it since the beginning of time. It is all part of His plan. And it will all lead to love. Thanks to the death and resurrection of God’s only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, we have a wonderful choice: we can communicate with God PERSONALLY. Yes, on an individual, day-by-day basis. No more of this ambassador ceremony. God has restored us to the purity of Eden, and now we too can walk with God in the cool of the day.
On that day, when our Lord sagged with his last breath on the cross, and the skies darkened…the veil was shredded. The temple was turned upside down. Now the Gentiles didn’t have to stay in their court. Or the women in theirs. Or the men, or the priests. You could walk into the Holy of Holies and stand before God, purified. It is God’s grace that gave us this. His mercy, sparing us from the consequence of our sin. Oh, but guess what?
We pretended it never happened.
Even though the basis of Christianity itself is solely the wondrous cross…so many Christians just ignore the Holy of Holies. Pretending that the veil is still there, perfectly fine to leave it that way. It is too great a challenge to our fallen nature to REPENT of sins we don't want to admit we commited. To accept the grace of God and hand Him our lives is painful. Its places God before us, in control of us. We are no longer autonomous, able to control our own destinies. So we just ignore the cross altogether. What a spit in the face of God! What a sacrilege, an abuse, a sin! We have trampled God’s grace. First, our violation of creation in Eden. Then, our shunning of the prophets. Then we killed God’s Son. Now we desecrate the new covenant with our ignorance.
We are a sick, sinful people. It’s a miracle in itself that God doesn’t wipe us off the planet as he did with the people in Noah’s time. But wait…He will.
The end is coming. The last days are drawing near, assuming we aren’t in them now. There is a time coming when your choices will be irrelevant. Where you will finally MISS grace. Where salvation will literally pass you by.
Turn. Entwine yourself in Love, for He awaits you with a passion. Step into the Holy of Holies and never look back. This is the greatest end. We must worship our Creator, bow at His feet. Hand our lives back to Him and admit that it was WE who stole them. This will lead to Love. And God is Love.