Breaking

Today in church we took communion. This is normal enough. But something new came to my heart and mind today as I held my little wafer. (you know the chalk like tasting "bread" you have at communion) I was doing as I do every time (almost routinely) holding my bread in my hand waiting for the "go-ahead" to break it in half and take it.

As I sat there, and in the quietness of my heart I heard this whisper that said..."It's your sin that breaks me." My heart lept to my throat, and as I sat there staring at the little round wafer in my hand, tears began to sting my eyes. "It was my sin that held Him there..." came to mind, and I began to cry. "my body is broken for you..." I heard the pastor say, and the words snapped me back into present time, back from my far away place. I heard all the little snaps all around me as everyone sitting near me began to "break" their communion. Sobs started to choke me. My sin, break Him. It's my sin that broke him. His body was BROKEN for me. If it were not for my sin, He would not have been broken. I'm so sorry Lord....I repent. I'm so sorry...I'm so repentant...

"I did it for you, because I love you, because your repentant, because you know you need my forgiveness..." And yet, I also know He did it for me while I was still YET a sinner...

So now that I KNOW I'm a sinner...and I RECOGNIZE my sin...and REPENT of my sin...my breaking that wafer represents my ACCEPTANCE of my NEED FOR GRACE. And OH HOW I NEED GRACE.

Do you think you need grace? Is it something you think about? I haven't really thought much about my desperate need for grace all that often...and that is why today, and I heard the wafers break around me, and as I held my own wafer in my hand, knowing that in order to accept that grace, it would have to be broken. He had to be broken. So, He let them break Him. He was broken on the cross...for me. For my sin. Before I even knew my sin.

SO here I sit. Holding my wafer, each second that goes by that I do not break it in two, I stand out in the crowd a little bit more...crying, I break it. I accept His grace. I repent. I show my public display of my need for His saving grace. Thank you for the cross.

I will never take communion lightly again. I will never approach the table as though, "I'm not really that bad..." Or that my sin "isn't big enough to confess..." I'm going to lay it ALL out there. My negligence, my complacency...my deceit, my malice, my dishonor of the Father in my thoughts, my poor attitudes, my disgust for others, my contempt towards correction...

I'm laying it all out there. Nothing human is safe. It's all sin. ACCEPT what is covered by the cross. And as I accept His gift of salvation, I accept forgiveness, and a cover for all my unrighteousness...KNOWING all the while, without that gift of salvation I would be spending my eternity in hell. A place where Isaiah tells me there is constant pain, constant turmoil, fire that will not burn out, and gnashing of teeth. I don't want that, and I don't believe anyone in their right mind would say they would prefer that to the way heaven is described by Isaiah, where he says the "former things will not be remembered (65:17) but where we will be glad and rejoice forever (vs.18) and where "never again will an infant live only a few days..." vs 20 and where children will no longer be doomed to misfortune (vs. 23) and of course that the lamb and wolf will feed together as well as the lion eating straw like an ox..( vs. 25)

All of those things sound amazing to me. They whisper peace, and contentment and joy without ceasing. I heard heaven described this way, we will get there and upon entering we will look to one another and say, "cancer? whats that? I can't seem to remember..."

"As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you..." Isaiah 66: 13

Do you need comfort? Do you want a future promise of peace without end? Do you need someone to wipe the tears from your eyes and fill that aching void in your soul? Then first, accept the fact that He was broken for you, and repent of what has broken Him, and then live on in the freedom He offers you in the cross.

He was broken for me, and for you, so that you could have eternal life. I am recognizing the magnitude of that statement today.