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You’re at the grocery store again. The same thing you do every week. Pick up the ingredients for the upcoming week’s meals. It’s a bit mundane, as shopping usually is. You pass children with their mothers down the aisles; some are polite, while others beg for candy. You see the man with the American flag muscle shirt, the teenagers grouped together like giggling hyenas. There’s the middle aged woman examining an avocado, and the 20-something college kid pulling a frozen pizza out of the freezer.

Nothing seems out of the ordinary; regular people following their regular routines. As you pick up your last item and place it in your basket, you turn to head toward the register. You see someone run past the isle in a hurry. “Weird,” you think “I wonder what their rush is?” You hear a popping noise to your left, from the other side of the store. Maybe someone dropped something. You continue to head toward the front of the store, and as you turn out of the isle, you see people running, and hear screams of panic. There’s a woman lying on the ground in a pool of blood.

Suddenly, everything goes in slow motion. Blood rushes to your head, as the perimeter of your vision goes white. You see a masked man and flashes of light before you. He’s pointed to your left, and as you begin to turn to run, he looks at you, yelling something, and aims his weapon at you.

This is it. Time seems to stand perfectly still, and in this eternal moment of accepting your unfortunate fate, you see a dark shadow move in front of you. A muzzle blast leaves a corona of light around this object in front of you. Time somehow seems to stop entirely. There is no sound, there is no movement; a perfect darkened picture of nothingness, with just your thoughts to keep you company. “Am I dead?” you think to yourself.

As reality slowly fades back, you can hear screaming and wailing coming at you like a freight train. People come back into view, and the ensuing chaos with them. The gunman has fled, leaving a bloody mess strewn about the linoleum floor. You gasp, and then look down to check your body for bullet holes, but find none. Breathing a sigh of relief, you look down to see a man laid out in front of you, gasping and wheezing. You run to give him aid, then realize this was the shadow that passed in front of you. His airways filled with blood, he tries his best to whisper to you “are you okay?” You tell him softly that you are fine. Trying to put pressure on his chest wound with your hands, he pushes them away gently. “It’s okay.” He says slowly, “I did what I needed to do. You are safe, and I took this bullet for you. Please tell my children that I love them, and do not waste your life.” The last word sputters out of his mouth, now filled with blood. He takes his final breath and dies in your arms; a complete stranger who chose to trade his life for yours.

As I wrote this short story in my head on my way home from work today, I remembered that someone has already died for me. Taken the bullet with my name on it, and given me a second chance to live a life worth living. That my value has nothing to do with what I drive, who I marry, or what gadgets I own. My life was worth someone else’s. They made that choice before I had a say in it.

How do I talk to myself? What kinds of things do I believe about myself that spit in the face of that man’s sacrifice? If heaven chose to bankrupt itself so that I can live, what does that say about my true value? How should I actually speak to myself, and how should I treat others? Is my life today worthy of someone else’s death? Would they be proud of what choices I am making with the second chance that they gave me?

The man that died for me also died for you. He gave up his right to a fair trial, embraced a brutal beating that marred him beyond human recognition. Suffocated, bled, cried in panic and pain for several grueling hours, with one simple thought that made it all worth it for Him: He gets to have a relationship with you. You were the joy set before him; like a treasure buried, he bought the whole plot of land, just so that He could get to know you. It didn’t matter it cost Him a life savings to buy the land, He simply wanted you.

What would you say to someone dying in front of you, gasping for their last breath from the bullet they took from you?

Continue reading]]> “even though I have received such wonderful revelations from God. So to keep me from becoming proud, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment me and keep me from becoming proud.” (2 Corinthians 12:7 NLT)

God showed me the reason I have such an emotional, mental, and physical torment in the memory of my darkest hour of my former self, and the sin that was so evident (and the cause of those days), was not to be shared (as has been evident based on my internal response each time I am forced to relive those memories) , but a brutally honest reminder of how much He has truly released me from, and how much he loves me. The great debt has been overpaid, my life so radically and wonderfully transformed, and the realization of God’s true love not only for myself, but for all others is clearly written upon my heart and mind, even evoking a physical response of trembling at the mere realization of it all. God is so gracious, loving, and pursues me violently without regard for human understanding or permission. His ways are so wonderfully and radically polar opposite of our ability to rationalize or comprehend. He truly is LOVE. Yes, love is an actual person. I am forever indebted to Him. My life is not enough for payment, and I gladly embrace my servitude to Him. I lovingly and passionately am proud to serve such a great Master, Teacher, Friend, King, and Father. His love knows no limits, and reaches far beyond time and space, piercing through bone, flesh, spirit, mind, and soul. My heart is saturated with the fingerprints of His love, and over pours because of the limits of which I cannot hold it. Thank you King Jesus for paying my debt. I am so truly grateful, and proudly bear this thorn of remembrance in honor of all that you have done for me. No one could ever love me as completely as you do. All praise, honor, glory, and love go to you. You alone deserve it. I love you my Lord and Saviour.