God sees.
God knows.
God cares.
He sees that our lives, our relationships, our communities are messed up, and He is not aloof. He hurts with us.
He sees that our efforts to fix what’s broken aren’t working.
So He devised a plan to make all things good once again.
That means the day is coming when He is going to purge the world of all that is evil, hurtful and destructive.
He is angry that little children are molested, needy people are oppressed, the people He loves are abused.
Perpetrators will answer for their crimes.
But that creates a dilemma.
We are all of us perpetrators. We are all guilty at one level or another.
We are all stained with sin.
So how does He purge the world of evil without purging us along with that evil?
Enter Jesus.
God becomes vulnerable.
He moves in range so we can take a swing at Him if we want.
And that’s exactly what we did.
We hated Him.
We nailed Him to a cross, and left Him there to die.
But while He was absorbing all our wrath, He also absorbed the wrath of God.
He took our punishment, so that we perpetrators could be set free.
He met hate with love, and overcame.
Jesus and death had it out.
Death lost.
Jesus won.
Now the life and love of Jesus is available to all—
if we want it.
If we invite Jesus in, His life and love rebuild our lives, our relationships, our communities, our world.
This is an opt-in or opt-out arrangement.
No one will compel you to participate.
It’s your choice.
You may want to define yourself with evil.
You may want to draw a line between you and God.
You have that power.
But the day will come, when God will honor all those lines,
and finish His work
of purging our world
of everything evil, hurtful and destructive,
and rebuilding
everything good.
Photo credit: Adapted from a photo by Khánh Hmoong, Flickr, Creative Commons License
