“Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it.” ~ Robert Robinson
You are small, the path is daunting, you were never meant to make your way alone. You need a savior but that savior is not you.
But you can try. You can make yourself moral, you can make yourself rich, you can carve out a life by the grit of your intentions.
You can pretend you are happy. You can portray yourself as wise. You can use other people as bit parts in your story, and write every scene around you. But the curtain will fall, the audience will exit, the lights will go out on your efforts.
Somewhere, in deepest spaces of your heart, is a lost child yearning for home.
Since the first chapter of history, humans have fled from the one place we would be happy. We’ve tripped over roots, been scratched bloody from brambles, stumbled up rocky pathways, hungry and aching for a hand-hold. The one thing we’ve refused to do is the one thing we must do.
Turn around.
And run into the arms of the one who inbreathes us, who designed us and has carved our names on his hand.* To the one who can “save us in every way a person can be saved.”
A Savior-Figure
The quote is Rose describing Jack, the young passenger on the Titanic who froze to death in the North Atlantic so she could be dry and live. Rose was going the wrong way, engaged to a man who would use, but not love her. Pursuing the lifestyle of the glittering, soul-selling rich, she needed to turn around, to find a savior who could restore her true self. Jack, a Christ figure of sorts, became an illustration of Love.
Would we admire Jack, who died for the sake of another, if Jesus hadn’t died for us first? What does true love like? Look at Jesus, our Savior.
In our Alphabet Adagio we have finally reached the New Testament. In the first four books, the Gospels, we watch all the promises of the Old Testament converge. Jesus is God the Son, the true Adam, the true Israel, the true Tabernacle and Temple. He is the new Covenant, the new King, the good Shepherd, and through him we are given new life.
What is it like to be saved?
According to the Gospel writers, Jesus came,
- To heal and remake what is broken.
- To seek and to save the lost.
- To deliver us from sin and judgment.
- To rescue us from the grip of evil.
- To restore our relationship with God.
- To usher in his kingdom, with a new kind of humanity as its ambassadors to the world.
A kingdom where love wins, justice reigns, evil is banished, and every person is invited to come home.
The story is not over. In the chapters ahead, Jesus will make all of God’s dreams come true.
Have you turned around your weary self and run to Jesus, your Savior?
*Isaiah 49:16
In our series, An Alphabet Adagio, we are savoring the story of the Bible, our story, alphabetically. You can subscribe to e-mail at the bottom of this website so you don’t have to miss a letter.
Photograph by Melanie Hunt
