I have come to the conclusion that fall goes before love. How do you know you are in love unless you have fallen, either metaphorically or literally? Sometimes, you have to fall hard to be in love.
Unless you experience the awesomeness of God’s grace, you can never fully appreciate God’s grace. Until God’s grace has found practical expression in your life, you cannot talk about God’s love in all its fullness.
One of my all-time favourite writer remains Karen Kingsbury. I would give anything to meet her and see how her mind conceives her works. She is mind-blowing. This post is not about Karen but the third book in her Redemption series- RETURN. The book resonated in my spirit. I read this book more than 5 years ago but I have always connected with it a way even I cannot fully understand.
The story of Luke, the last child of the Baxter family in Karen’s Redemption series is my case study. Truly, this is a story, a fiction but the reality of it resounds in my heart. It is a story we all can relate with if we are really sincere. It tells of how we are “uptight” with God and harshly judge everyone who falls short of our expectation. We create the standards and heaven helps anyone that falls short of that standard. If you have been a church boy all your life, born into a Christian home, serve in church, goes for evangelism and all that, it’s very easy to think less of others and have a shallow understanding of God’s grace. I tell you, until you have experienced God’s grace at the lowest point of your life, you might never understand and appreciate God’s love.
To truly understand what happened with Luke in Return, one must start from the second book of the series-Remember. Remember tells the story of Ashley, her struggles, her fall, her shame, condemnation and finally her salvation. It also showed us how Luke treated Ashley because of Ashley’s “stain”. How dare Ashley have an affair and get pregnant? Like many Christians today Luke had this sense of self righteousness and anyone who fell below that standard was simply unworthy. Ashley suffered contempt from Luke because of this. I personally disliked Luke for this. Anyways, without delving too much into Ashley’s story, imagine my surprise when Pope Luke in one night of crazy emotions slept with his girlfriend. How the great brother Luke has fallen? He could not even believe it himself and because he never truly understood God’s love, he ran away from God. The whole reality of God became a burden for him and he kept running and the far he ran, the more Elizabeth Baxter, his mother continued to tell him that the Hound of Heaven will catch him. Hilarious!
Luke hated himself so much that he could not even understand or imagine that God could love him. He thought God’s love was because of his self-righteousness. He never understood that even at his lowest point, God’s love remains sufficient for him. At a point when he was suppose to be closer to God, he ran away from God. His life was full of misery and he was totally lost. At a point, I actually pitied him but I realized that he needed to go through that humbling experience for him to step down from his seat of judgment. He needed to fall really hard to actually have a true and personal relationship with God, not the kind of relationship he had because he was born into the faith. Of course, he eventually found his way back and he understood God’s love better and loved God as he ought to.
The summary here is that as Christians, if you think you are standing strong, be careful not to fall. Stop tormenting those you think are not holy. You are not assistant-God. Leave that judgment seat. I understand your desire to bring people to God but remember that even God loves sinners. Jesus Christ died for us while we were sinners. You do not have any justification for hating the person, what you should hate is the sin.
Finally, if you have not read the Redemption series, I think you need to. I think Remember remains my favourite in that series.
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