Never in a million years would we have imagined a God like this...
Instead of us ascending up a mountain to reach God, this God descends to us and even becomes one of us.
Instead of being found only in the spectacular and impressive, this God is found in the everyday and the ordinary.
Instead of us spilling our blood to get to God, this God spills his own blood to get to us.
Instead of returning the hate of sinners with more hate, this God includes, forgives, and heals us.
Instead of gravitating toward the strong and popular among us, this God gravitates toward the weak and marginalized among us.
Instead of using his suffering as power over us in order to punish us, this God uses it as power for us in order to transform us.
Instead of making us earn our way back through self-hatred and self-punishment, this God sets us free and invites us into his fullness of life.
Instead of using external brute force and coercion to get people to change, this God pays the price of change within himself, then gives it to us as a gift.
Instead of keeping his distance due to our unworthiness of his presence, this God creates faith and transformation in us from the inside.
Instead of getting frustrated at our hard hearts and slowness to change, this God patiently woos and loves us from the inside until we wake up.
Instead of sending fear and retribution and shame and sin and death to wreak havoc in our lives, this God turns them all upside down and uses all of it in our favor.
Instead of overcoming by punitive “winning,” this God overcomes with co-suffering “losing,” and calls us to the same.
Instead of leaving us in our chosen blindness and delusions, this God is pleased to reveal his Son in us.
Instead of us ascending up a mountain to reach God, this God descends to us and even becomes one of us.
Instead of being found only in the spectacular and impressive, this God is found in the everyday and the ordinary.
Instead of us spilling our blood to get to God, this God spills his own blood to get to us.
Instead of returning the hate of sinners with more hate, this God includes, forgives, and heals us.
Instead of gravitating toward the strong and popular among us, this God gravitates toward the weak and marginalized among us.
Instead of using his suffering as power over us in order to punish us, this God uses it as power for us in order to transform us.
Instead of making us earn our way back through self-hatred and self-punishment, this God sets us free and invites us into his fullness of life.
Instead of using external brute force and coercion to get people to change, this God pays the price of change within himself, then gives it to us as a gift.
Instead of keeping his distance due to our unworthiness of his presence, this God creates faith and transformation in us from the inside.
Instead of getting frustrated at our hard hearts and slowness to change, this God patiently woos and loves us from the inside until we wake up.
Instead of sending fear and retribution and shame and sin and death to wreak havoc in our lives, this God turns them all upside down and uses all of it in our favor.
Instead of overcoming by punitive “winning,” this God overcomes with co-suffering “losing,” and calls us to the same.
Instead of leaving us in our chosen blindness and delusions, this God is pleased to reveal his Son in us.
Instead of appearing very powerful, this God appears very powerless. A naked, bleeding, poor, weak-looking man who has been betrayed and abandoned by all of his friends, rejected by both society and religion, suffering alone and dying on a cross- becomes the perfect image of what God is actually like- not a passive doormat who somehow makes suffering heroic in and of itself, but one who becomes the means by which death and evil are absorbed and completely destroyed forever.
Never in a million years would we have imagined a God like this-- perhaps that is one of the more compelling reasons to believe.
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