The truck pulled into the driveway. The gentleman that stepped out lived up the street. I had seen him before but had never met him. He went to the other side of his vehicle to gather my son gently up in his arms. We walked to the door to greet him seeing his purpose for being there. Josiah was scraped up pretty bad, abrasions on his face, arms, and legs. His bicycle had crashed.
We thanked our neighbor, took our son inside and began to assess the damage.
Killer hill is just as it sounds, a steep hill with a long drop. We’d told our son he could not take his bicycle there. We knew its dangers. He would not be able to handle it at his age. He didn’t listen.
There’s something about being told you cannot do, that makes you want to do. It was that way with my son that day. He couldn’t anticipate the pain that awaited him if he crashed. He wanted to be on his own running after that which he wanted. It wasn’t until afterwards that the cost became evident to him, as he felt the sting of flesh torn abrasions multiplied on his little body.
As I watched him breathe in and out of the pain I ached. I took him in my arms and tenderly washed his wounds applying the bandages to help them heal. I could see the regret on his face as he received the love so freely offered.
I wonder what my son thought when he crashed down that hill? Did he wonder if he would be in trouble? Did he expect to be reprimanded? After all he had done the wrong thing, that which he had been told not to do. But I didn’t care that he had gone against what I had told him. All I cared about was somehow, someway easing his pain to make it all better.
As this memory floods my being I am made aware of something that’s been there all along. This has been the way of God with me.
I haven’t known that for most of my life. For sin distorts everything I see. I have felt the shame of my sin and believed He must too. Oh he would never say that to me but somewhere deep inside at the core of my being, I knew I was a disappointment at best.
For you see, sin changed the way I saw; Me. I believed what I saw, God saw too. As I sit here I wonder what it did to His heart to watch me wait to be reprimanded and chastised, unaware of His true love.
I didn’t have eyes to see Him holding me close, cleaning my wounds, dressing them and making it all better. I was convinced that He had to be disappointed in me. After all I didn’t follow what I was told to follow. In my limited understanding I was convinced that He had to be wishing I was something I was not. It caused me to step on a gerbil wheel to try harder next time, to be better. Somehow, someway I would strive to become that good little girl I was supposed to be. The God I was told about saw my imperfections but somehow found a way in his heart to love me in spite of them.
It’s not the God I’ve now come to know.
The first act of love in the Garden of Eden was to cover the attempts Adam and Eve had made to assuage their sin. They were naked and ashamed of what they had done. They gathered fig leaves to hide the rawness of their failures and then they hid. They were afraid of God and what He would do.
But God came after them for He desperately loved them. He removed their self-imposed coverings and replaced it with His own… From that day forward Adam and Eve were covered by God. It’s stunning to realize it all.
Everyday, on my worst day, I am covered by God with the righteousness of Christ. On my ugliest days of making wrong choices I am loved with an everlasting love. He sees me not in my sin but in the newness of who He knows me to be.
The more the religious bindings fall away the more clearly I see this mother heart that dwells within revealing this God I have loved for so long. Sin distorts everything, yet love covers a multitude of sin.
This life with my own awakens me to the reality of His heart to me. For my dear ones are loved beyond their wildest dreams. The love does not change due to the mistakes they make. They are mine and I am theirs, always and forever.
While I was yet a sinner Christ came for me. He didn’t see the filth I was covered in. He saw the one He created to love.
He saw …. Me
©copyrighted: 2012; Julie L. Todd
My Long and Winding Road 