I think that's why I am so grateful that Valentine's Day and Ash Wednesday intersect this year. Ash Wednesday, the first day of the Lenten season, is a day when we perhaps feel the significance of our need and the amazing love and sacrifice of Jesus on our behalf more than other days. Not that we don't have awareness other days, but the focus makes us that much more aware, much like Valentine's Day makes us more aware of our love or lack of, like it or not. And the reason that this is such a great combination is that Ash Wednesday is a highlight in the greatest love story of all time. And the best news is that it can be our story.
I don't know about you, Dear Reader, but I couldn't have been more of a mess and lived. Drugging and drinking and all the wrong kinds of love in all the wrong places weren't enough to ever let me escape the understanding that I was broken and worthless. Never good enough and never able to measure up, and not even able to lie, cheat and hide well enough to pretend to fit in and belong with those who could measure up, until I gave up trying. I didn't realize that all those I thought measured up also didn't, and unable to serve in heaven I tried to rule the hell my life had become, only to fail at even that. Love? I didn't really understand the meaning of the word, and everything became about me, my acceptance, my need, and what someone or something could make me feel. Finally, I became so broken, lost and afraid that pain became the only feeling I trusted and life became agony. The only truth I knew for sure was that I was unaccepted, unforgiven and deserved to be.
Cut away to another scene. A perfect, holy and blameless God who had created everything stands apart. I can't approach Him. I don't deserve to. And no matter how hard I try, I can't ever quite reach the place where I feel comfortable going to Him, because I know the truth of who and how I am. But the God that I thought hated me for my faults and failures, loved me as I was, and am, not as I should be. He loved me so much that He wrapped Himself in flesh, fasted from His glory and suffered my life and temptations. He did what I was always supposed to do and never could. And then, He gave me His prize for success as He took my pain and punishment and death that comes with failure. And because He loves me enough not to leave me the way I was, He gave me His power to enter into relationship with Him, to walk away from the chemicals and the habits that had me enslaved, to become something new and different.
Today I have a life worth living, I am free from the obsession to drink and drug, and I am someone who is able to give and receive love in a healthy way. Not because I did anything. Not because I figured out how to be a better man. Not because I deserved help or yet another chance. No, all because He loved me enough to accept me as I am, not as I should be, because He wanted to bring me to Himself so much that He was willing to suffer everything I deserved in my place, and because His love has the power to make us new, clean and beautiful.
It's the greatest story ever told, and it's true for me. Some of the details may be different, but it is or can be true for you as well. Because when He fasted from His glory and suffered in my place, He did it for you as well. He died for you, as He did for me, because He loves you as you are, not as you should be, but He also loves you enough not to leave you the mess you are. In 46 days the focus will be on the glorious turn of the story where He rises from the grave and ascends into heaven so that His Spirit can come make His home within us and give us the power to do what we could never do on our own. But for now, let us remember with a grateful heart what He gave up and how He suffered so that He could have relationship with us, so that we could become His. What an amazing love! How fitting for us to begin to fine tune our focus on what He has done for us on the same day we can't help but think of love. Because whether you have been blessed with the amazing grace of a loving relationship with another human being, whether your relationship needs some work or even a miracle, or if love seems like just another cosmic joke played on you by a cruel life, the truth is that you are more deeply and truly loved than you will ever be able to comprehend this side of eternity.
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