Ready for the Cross: Accused and Condemned

As a child, I remember that when I was hiding something, everything made me jumpy. I’d be sweatin' it 24/7 wondering when I was going to be found out. And when I knew my parents knew, it was a ticking time bomb of when everything would surface. One time, when I was in big time trouble, I recall the feeling in the pit of my stomach while sitting in the den of our apartment just waiting for my discipline. I remember wondering if my mom would notice if I padded my backside for the licks I knew were coming, but I wasn’t brave enough to try it. I remember clenching the edge of the seat and trying to hold back tears to the point of my throat burning. I would always think, I will never do another bad thing again!

I remember one time, my brother and I had been playing with matches. When the burned matches were found in my bedroom garbage can, I lied. As quick as I can blink, it shot out of my mouth. I blamed it on some other kid and said I was hiding the evidence for them. Turns out being quick to lie doesn’t mean you’re very good at it.

Any time I think of those moments I’m immediately transported back to that child, and I experience that dread of waiting, the fear of being found out, and that blasted stomach ache that I could feel all the way down to my behind. You know the feeling!

As an adult, it looks a little different. I remember when my husband and I returned to the Church. We had played hooky for ten years. Upon returning, I was wrecked with guilt. To know the Church is to love the Church, and I had betrayed her. I had skipped town without so much as a word and never looked back. I kept my children from her and from God, in fact, at one point, I tried to explain God away to my children.

The first women’s conference held at our local body cornered me. The teaching pinned me down so accurately there was no escaping my grief. I cried to the point that I was asked if I could drive home safely. Never have I ever felt more like Gomer from Hosea. The years I skipped out on his church. The years I kept my children from him. The complete disregard for him. It was almost too much to carry. And I couldn’t carry it. It’s why I could only cry and cry. I cried off and on for months. Any word of truth that hit me, and the dam would break. Sometimes in the back yard while praying in the spirit. Sometimes while listening to Lisa Bevere while scrubbing a window. It was a lot. And it was necessary. I was grieving, mourning, and even groaning over my sin.

While there is much to celebrate, there is much to grieve. Indeed, I’ll no longer have to clench the edge of my seat, scheme to throw blame elsewhere, or figure out how to ease the brunt of my punishment. But I still turned my back on God. I was as Gomer as they come, and my sins don’t get to land in categories of really bad, so-so bad, not too bad, or really bad. Next to a holy God, sin is sin.

I deserve to stand accused and condemned, but instead, Jesus stood accused and condemned in my place. That is something worth revisiting. Worth grieving over. Worth a season of mourning.