“I am one in six billion. I am a liar. I am a coward. I was born in sin. I am afraid. I am no one special.”
Hope…there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of hope going around these days. Youth seem to think they’re worthless, even followers of Christ feel just like one in six billion, as if they are nothing. But can you blame them?
In a world of unlimited connectivity, where Tokyo and St. John’s are in the same backyard, where the people have never been so together is it only me that feels so isolated? I mean you hear the horror stories of families that never speak except through screens, of relationships being built with text messages and great kids having no social ability but I think it goes a lot deeper than all that. I think that every youth has the world at their fingertips, and the world is telling them that they can’t reach it.
It’s postmodern disease. It’s a philosophy that nothing matters, nothing changes. It is not what Christ died to proclaim.
When Jesus stumbled up the dusty streets of Jerusalem, his body torn to shreds by Roman cruelty and his back bent beneath a heavy cross he must have thought of the people he was trying to save. I think that if he was focused on the pain or the struggle, on his blood dripping onto the hot dust he may have never finished it…for even Christ got disheartened; look at Gethsemane. No, it’s certain that we were at the forefront of his mind that day; clear in his actions to forgive a thief while nails tore against his soft flesh and he thirsted beneath the hot sun. But if all we are is liars and cowards, unable to change the world around us, unable to be special then the question begs to be asked:
why die for us?
Culture, the world, everything seems to call us worthless, tell us that there’s nothing we can affect, that we are just a stroke on the page of time…an accident of nature soon remedied by the earth’s endless spinning. But the blood that Jesus Christ bled that day, the cross that we should have carried, such beautiful love says something completely different.
Jesus wouldn’t die for worthless people, for people without a chance, for accidents. He wouldn’t go to such extreme lengths in order to save thieves who would always be thieves, sex addicts who would always be sex addicts, murderers who would always murder. He walked Calvary for us, that’s true…but not for who the world tells us that we are. He opened hands to sharp nails because he saw what we could be, because he knew that great things, the great beauty that we were created to attain. So when the world tells us that we are one in six billion, not special, worthless and powerless we need to remember that Christ thinks an awful lot of us. He sees the truth, what is deep inside, and what he saw led him to bleed on a Roman cross amidst criminals, amidst you and I. He sees the truth, and the truth is that we are special, that we have amazing potential, that the world as we know it is in our grasp. That we can change the direction of culture, that we can dry the tears of hungry children half a world away, that we can love those who hate us; he saw that we could, and died to show us how to begin.
Seems a little late to start, but I say to you that the seeds of love you plant today will bear fruit in eternity…but only if they’re planted beneath the shadow of the cross. So let’s start walking; it’s a long and hard way to Calvary; but he’s already there with his veins open, ready to water the soil of our potential.
A Dreaming Orange
