Treason

I wrote this last Fall.  I want to share it with you now, because 1)It is Good Friday; and 2) This was a breaking point for me that needed to happen before I could even begin to piece other things from the past 5-10 years together.  I still cry when I read it.  God is so, so good.  He is beyond anything we could ever imagine with our tiny little minds.  

1 October 2015

Ah, holy Jesus, how hast thou offended,

That man to judge thee hath in hate pretended?

By foes derided, by thine own rejected,

O most afflicted!

Who was the guilty?  Who brought this upon thee?

Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone thee!

‘Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee,

I crucified thee.

For me, kind Jesus, was thy incarnation,

Thy mortal sorrow, and thy life’s oblation;

Thy death of anguish and thy bitter passion,

For my salvation.

Therefore, kind Jesus, since I cannot pay thee,

I do adore Thee, and will ever pray thee,

Think on thy pity and thy love unswerving,

Not my deserving.

Johann Heermann, 1630

Translated by Robert S. Bridges, 1899

For reasons that I will explain at a later time, I have not felt the desire at all to go anywhere near music.  (It’s a long story.)  However, tonight I did decide to play the piano a little bit, and I came across a tune and text I have known for a long time. 

I played and sang, and before I even knew what was happening, I was undone.  I couldn’t get past “my treason” without totally breaking down. 

trea·son

/ˈtrēzən/

noun

·      the action of betraying someone or something.

synonyms: treachery, disloyalty, betrayal, faithlessness

·      historical

The crime of murdering someone to whom the murderer owed allegiance

I pulled myself together and tried again.  This time, I couldn’t get past “I it was denied thee”.  My throat clenched, my eyes welled up with tears, and with my face in my hands, I sat at the piano and wept.  “I’m sorry,” was all I could eek out.  Over and over again, “I’m sorry.” 

I tried again.  But this time I just sang right through the lump in my throat, past the tears in my voice and my eyes, and despite my heart that was about to break and bleed right out of my chest. 

Wobbly vibrato and all, I sang to the top of my lungs, with all I had:

“Therefore, kind Jesus, since I cannot pay thee,

I do adore thee, and will ever pray thee,

Think on thy pity and thy love unswerving,

Not my deserving.”

Anything but my deserving, Lord.  I cry now just thinking about it.  “Anything BUT my deserving.”  I have committed treason.  I have denied Him.  I never thought I would.

I let go of Him.  But He hung onto me. 

The God of the Universe hung onto me?  Why???

It’s His love unswerving.  I don’t get it.  I don’t get it at all. 

But I can tell you this:

It’s not because of who I am.  It is because of who HE is. 

Can you hear that?  Can you even allow that into your mind, let alone your heart?  I just want to go out in the back yard and scream!

I couldn’t hear that for such a long time.  Like, my whole life “a long time”.  I have been a Christian since I was 8, and I heard words like grace, mercy, and love every week for years and years.  But these concepts never became truth to me like they are today.  I have denied God.  I have questioned Him.  I doubted, big-time.  I ran as hard as I could in the opposite direction of Him.  And yet, after all of that, He came after me.  I almost can’t even fathom it.  It is too huge.  Too heartbreaking.  And too achingly beautiful.

It has been HIS grace.  It has been HIS love.  It has been HIS free gift. 

I cannot even begin to claim “goodness” for apologizing to Him at the piano and following Him now at all…HE allured me…HE shined the light in my heart, into the darkest places, so that I would have the knowledge of Him.  It hasn’t been me at all.

I sure do wish I had clued in sooner.  But at least now God and I can begin getting real.

“For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.  But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.”

2 Corinthians 4:6-7