Grace For the Perpetrator

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The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end. 

They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. 

“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.” 

The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. 

Lamentations 3:22-25 

…Familiar words I have read before, even sung before.  I’ve been comforted by the hope that morning can bring more than a fresh start to a weary body.  I’ve embraced the restoration it can bring to an exhausted heart.

But these words in context do more than comfort a victim.  This treasure – found in the midst of five grief-ridden poems – comfort the perpetrator.  Line after line, tear after tear, Judah grieves the fall of her Jerusalem, once full of people, now “like a widow she has become.”  She who was great “has become a slave.”  

Her choice to fill her void with excitement beyond her Beloved has left her with filth, nakedness, regret (1:8).  Deep regret – the kind where you feel swallowed by world’s darkness.
Community turned into suffocating solitude.  Respect turned into a shamed existence.  And she has brought it onto herself. 

While there is no longer no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus - no condemnation – I see the effects of my sin everywhere.  I am Jerusalem.  In the way I isolate myself from others.  In my children’s eyes or quivering chins.  In my husband’s silence.

My sin in 2012, it drove my Rescuer to the place of the skull centuries ago.  To the hill of pain and humiliation and judgment.  To the mountain of death lingering.  But in his choice…

“Here is a door through which God has crossed infinity to enter our finite existence, flooding the dungeons with light.  Here is a door through which we by faith my enter Heaven, a doorway made of nails and wood, a crossing, a cross.  But deepen further this paradox.  Ask: when were the windows most darkened for Jesus, that he could see nothing of God the Father?  Answer: On Golgotha.  And by what was the great door bolted shut and locked against his entering in?  By the wood and the nails of the cross. 
     Christ’s unseeing is our sight.  His solitude is the beginning of human communion with God... The dying of one is the other one’s window, and what has been veiled is now revealed, and a pagan whispers with the solemn weight of conviction, confession, faith: “Truly, this man was the Son of God!" - Walter Wangerin