SCARLET RAIN

And they fell.   Small beads of crimson divinity.
One by one like grenades of Grace onto parched dust.

Erupting as they exploded across the dirt encasing the foot of a barbaric wooden pole. 

One by one
Grenades of Grace

With each one, a shaking.  The Earth trembled.   The weight of those tiny drops too much for the firmaments.  Earthquakes, tremors, shocks. 

While hell wrenched and twisted under each drop, Heaven reverberated inconsolably, and everything between them was forever rearranged.

The rain was scarlet red that afternoon.   Falling not from a heavy cloud, but a broken body. 

There are reasons as to why this had to happen.  In our generation we find it hard to understand what necessitated an act of barbaric violence like this.   How could any of this possibly have been an extension of love?  We don’t understand.  Often repulsed by it.  Often offended and confused.  God is accused of being angry.  

One of my favourite authors puts it this way:

“All loving people are sometimes filled with wrath, not despite of but because of their love.  If you love a person and see someone ruining them – even they themselves – you get angry.” - Timothy Keller

When we behave in ways that fall short of God’s amazing best for our lives, that causes damage to us. God was not mad at us, He was mad at our condition.  We were ruining ourselves, we were ruined, damaged, hurt.  

Sin is not bad because someone behind a pulpit said so. 

Sin is not bad because it breaks some sort of moral code.  Sin is not bad because it fails to keep up appearances, and the expectations of others.  Sin is bad because is sells me short of God’s best for my life. 

Sin is bad because it hurts me. 
Sin is bad because it causes damage.

God is grieved by the damage I incur.  He’s not mad at me; His lament is over the injuries I sustain.

Sin hurts us.

Many deny it; they party hard and put on brave faces, only to close private doors where emptiness and confusion dwell.  Eventually, those private chambers burst into very devastating public spectacles.  Sin costs us.  It costs us dearly. 

He’s not mad at you.  He loves you.  He knows what He stored on the inside of you that may be lying dormant under layers of debris.   He wants to liberate that part of you.  The real you.

So who pays the price of the damage?  Well, until we meet Jesus, the brutalised Jesus, it’s us.  You and me – we pay the price of our self-accrued debts.  It’s called consequence, both here and, more importantly, into eternity.  

When we opt for sin, rather than God's best for us, we knowingly choose to separate ourselves from God.  Separation from God is the end of us.

The price tag of sin (selling out) 
is death (separation from God)

He loves us so much that He can’t bear the thought of us paying so dearly.  The cost is great, the price is steep, the debt too far gone.  We have lived well beyond our means.  He knows that we could never afford it, and that means we can never make our way back to Him.

He’s not mad at you.  He misses you.
He mourns how trapped you have become.

So this loving and just God put on flesh and entered the Earth as one of us.  Never sinning Himself, although personally tempted more than any one of us has even been. 

His one purpose was to die as a substitute paying off your debt and mine for the purpose of restoring us back into relationship with God.  To reconnect us in the very places we’d allowed separation.

Here is the reality of that barbaric moment: 

I murdered Jesus and He let me do it.

“You cannot nail the creator to His own creation.  Nails did not hold Jesus to that tree, love held Him there.”  - Mark Ramsey

There was a thick curtain in the temple of old.  It hung between the common man and the Holy of Holies.  We were never able to gain access there, the place where God dwelt.  In that stone building, we were separated from ever seeing Him, encountering Him, being near to Him.  Much like sin hangs in our hearts between who we are and a life of communion with God.

But when those scarlet beads of divine blood landed on our fallen planet something unprecedented took place.  History books tell us the curtain was rent in two.  Significantly noted that the tear was from top first downwards to the bottom.  As though a supernatural Hand reached out from on high and clearly had His way.  There will be no more separation. 

And they fell.   Small beads of crimson divinity.
One by one like grenades of Grace onto parched dust.
Scarlet rain.  A flood of Grace.

He’s not mad at you.  He loves you.

[Inspired by Timothy Keller, The Reason for God]