Torn

I'm wearing my favorite pair of jeans today. It's an old pair, from around the end of middle school or the beginning of high school, maybe seven or eight years ago. They're not what they used to be: when I was doing some mulching for one of my neighbors, a small hole near the back pocket turned into a small rip around the pocket, which turned into a large rip around the pocket, which has since evolved into a tear from the waist to my thigh (get your mind out of the gutter - I always wear athletic shorts underneath).

I'm feeling similarly torn lately. Like Nick Seagrave in yesterday's post: one moment horrified at the nail-pounding, the next whole-heartedly embracing it.

I'm frustrated with my failure to live primarily in God's Reality. It's been difficult to discover, through all my attempts to change from judging my standing by success to judging my standing by faithfulness and being content solely in being faithful, that I'm simply not faithful. That I'm torn between two Kingdoms that remain primarily unseen while of primary importance, so much so that everything thought, said, and done in this life has an effect upon my standing in them and between them.

I'm just praying that these torn feelings result in God's surgical sanctification instead of my own bufooning backsliding.

Comforting that my Savior can sympathize with these weaknesses and intercedes on my behalf. He remained committed to the Father's will while desiring a different path so much that his sweat was blood. His hands and feet were torn open by nails so that I wouldn't be eternally torn apart by God's wrath. And those holes aren't temporary. The church has been ordained to celebrate a remembrance feast to reflect upon Christ's death, but there won't be a need for communion in heaven: we'll be in Christ's presence and confronted with those scars firsthand, the holes from which the perfect precious blood of salvation and sacrifice flowed with grace.