Reconciled.

My heart has been met with a sense of urgency.
As I worked on painting the world onto a pair of TOMS I'm working on for a friend, I sat in the living room as my dad and sister watched a film about the injustice in our world.  I found myself draw in. In the film, essentially, a man wanted to divorce his wife within a culture where she would be left destitute to care for her two daughters, based on the reason that he wanted to marry a much younger wife and move to the city with their two sons.  When she refused to give him a divorce, he, along with the town's head of religion, hatched a plot to accuse and convict his wife of adultery, and sentence her to death.  In the end, their plan succeeded, and based on the men's false accusations and deception, the woman was stoned to death.  It was a very difficult film to watch, especially when the men were so ardent to defend the glory and honor of God through the stoning of a supposed guilty woman.
The injustice in the film was horrific.
It reminded me of the hopelessness of humanity in trying to reach/please a pure and holy God on its own.
But, furthermore, it made me so much more grateful that the same God who was so unreachable loved our broken humanity so much that He made a way to intimacy and communion with Him--Jesus.
What a precious gift we have in Jesus!
As I painted the world, I couldn't help but think about the countless people without knowledge of this precious gift.
As the story in the film unfolded, I was reminded of the picture of Jesus at the intended stoning of another woman who was caught in adultery, where He brought to light man's hopelessness in being holy in and of himself, and demonstrated the mercy and forgiveness of the Father through Himself, putting self-righteous religious leaders to shame and saving a broken but repentant woman from death.

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation." (2 Cor. 5:17-19)

And so the urgency churns restlessly within my heart.
The reconciliation to the Holy, Merciful, Good, and Loving God has been made, but there are many blinded by a veil of deception, hopelessly trying to reach a distant and demanding god through futile human efforts.  Jesus made the way, and now we enjoy intimacy and communion with the Father, praise the Lord.
Oh that we may be a part of seeing the lost come into the kingdom and be restored in His love.
May we never be satisfied to revel in life within a comfortable distance from others that are wasting away in death.

"We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." (5:20-21)