Two Tutors

"We are going through insist and give up all our lives. Sometimes we choose to insist on and sometimes we choose to give up. There are something worth remembering indeed, but there are also something we need to give up. Both insisting and giving up are kind of attitude,  to give up is courage and so is insisting. Most of the time we think to insist is better, but sometimes when we give up something, we receive more. We don't have a standard to measure which is better, it depends on what you think. Just do the right things that you think are right, not to be regret because life never turn back.  We should also learn to be satisfied, life doesn't always gives you what you want."   
 
This morning my 13-year-old Chinese student and I went back and forth between correcting her English and discussing the insightful and heart-revealing ideas she had expressed.  No assignment from school or from me prompted her to write on this topic.  She was thinking about these things, and so she wrote her ideas to practice her English for her lesson with me. 

Her writing lent itself to discussing whether there are any standards to measure right and wrong, any standards that would lead us to take a stand to always insist on something and to never give up on it.  I suggested that there are such standards, that we know innately, whether we are taught by society and our parents or not, such standards as telling the truth instead of lying, of being honest and not cheating on schoolwork as opposed to using someone else's work.  She seemed a little uncomfortable.  A guilty conscience perhaps?  Picking up on that, I introduced a new word to her: "conscience." 

I suggested that she come up with just ten basic rules to guide right and wrong behavior for the students at her school. She was a little overwhelmed with that idea, so I told her that ten basic rules of life have already been given by the one God who created the world and mankind.
       "Have you ever heard of The Ten Commandments?"
       "No."  
So I  told her the Story of the giving of The Ten Commandments and some of the history of Israel that led up to it.

In a review and homework email, I have challenged her to think about how people deal with the feelings of a guilty conscience, ineffective ways and effective ways.  I also explained that the purpose of the law was to show us our inability to keep it, and how Jesus' life and death can help free us from a guilty conscience and the consequences of our genuine guilt in breaking God's laws.  For homework, she will read the scriptural account of the story I told her.  She will read the 10 Commandments themselves and interact with my question and comment: "Have you ever broken any of these laws? I know I have!" 

Galatians 3:24 "Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith."

Two tutors, I and the Law are working together, Lord willing, to bring this young one to Christ, that she may be justified by faith. 

Trumpeting Joy!

"I don't believe you are the kind of person who would help kill someone, just because you are bigger and more powerful, just because the little person lives in a different room from you, vulnerable and trapped in the womb as opposed to outside the womb, just because you are afraid of how your life might change when that tiny little helpless person grows bigger and then comes into the 'room' where you live.  Reality is that when this little person comes into 'your room' he or she can bring you the greatest joy you have ever known! Or you can gift someone else with their greatest joy!  God says children are a gift from him to bring happiness!  (Psalm 127:3-5).  In contrast, a lie out there says they are a plague or something that will mess up our lives.  People call killing them 'choice,' 'freedom,' and 'reproductive health options,' to hide the awfulness of what they do and to cover up their not just messing up, but destroying, these little lives.  Your baby is already an absolutely amazing miracle, an amazing creation with marvelous biological engineering taking place in its mind and body, with a future and a purpose already planned for him or her by Almighty God (Psalm 139:16).

I'm praying for you, believing that you will make the right decision, not sinning against God, this child, yourself, and your conscience...no matter how hard it is.  When you make the right decision, you will feel true freedom and peace.

Hoping to hear from you.

Your friend at Choices,
Rhonda Wilkinson"

Just as the daffodils in my yard seem to trumpet and celebrate new life in the spring, so my heart was trumpeting JOY yesterday over a life rescued!  The distraught teenage mom to whom I directed the above email to came to talk to someone about her anguish over her unwanted pregnancy.  After we spoke, she decided to keep the baby and scheduled an ultrasound.  She came for the first ultrasound at 6 weeks along. We encouraged her to return for another. She made the second ultrasound appointment while her boyfriend, not wanting her to keep the baby, walked out of the office. Last I had heard, she hadn't kept that second ultrasound appointment. I feared that she perhaps had buckled under her fears and her boyfriends' pressure.  I attempted email contact after the first ultrasound, after the missed one, and then again several months later. Perhaps she never even read the emails, but I, my co-workers, and our prayer supporters prayed that she would change her mind. Just yesterday I learned that she did come back and another client advocate has been leading her through the decision-making lessons on choosing to place a baby for adoption. She chose life for her baby!  Thanking God that I and you, through your prayers, could be a part of the rescue team! 

Who Killed Jesus?

This past week one of my young Chinese ESL students asked me "Who killed Jesus?"  I told her the story from the gospel accounts as I remembered it.  I told her of the various parties involved: the pharisees and their jealousy and hatred, Judas and his betrayal, the crowds of Jews who wanted Barabbas freed instead of Jesus, Pontius Pilate who handed him over to the Jews, and the Roman soldiers who carried out the sentence of death.  I didn't think to mention all his other friends who deserted him. And at the time I didn't think to tell her that I had, that she had, that we all had killed Jesus.  The song I learned in music camp, the summer after 8th grade, pretty much says it all.

Who Killed Jesus?

Chorus 

Who killed Jesus many years ago?
Who is guilty of a crime so low?
Why did He have to die?
What is the reason why?
Who killed Jesus?
I would like to know!

Verses

 Was it Roman soldiers
With their tools of war
Driving nails thru hands that did no wrong?
Mocking and abusing
Crowning Him with thorns . . .
All the evidence is very strong!

Was it Pontius Pilate?
He was governor
Trying to decide the case that day,
Finding that the Savior
Had no fault His own
Was he guilty when he turned away?

Was it Hebrew children,
Proud of who they were,
Shouting crucify Him at their King,
Trading their Messiah
For a common thief,
Turning down the kingdom He could bring?

When I think of Jesus
And the way He died
How upon Him all my sin was laid
All the other people
Fade away from view
It's for me the sacrifice was made!

I no long wonder anymore.
I have found what I've been searching for.
My sin demanded hell!
On Him the judgment fell!
I am guilty!
Now it's plain to see
That it was really me!

© 1970 New Spring
Mickey Holiday

The Thread

She sat in my counseling room, wiping tear after tear, make-up smudge after make-up smudge. Tense and self-condemning, but to her credit, honest and oozing out her pain.  We examined where suffering comes from and the purpose for it.  We contemplated 2 Corinthians 5:21, "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."  She claims to be a believer, but it seemed  she had never truly understood the Gospel and how to apply it to her own heart.  The fog may have begun to lift as we spoke.  Her tears were replaced with smiles as she left. She gave me a warm hug, words of thanks, and assurance she would come again.

 To help me recall her story and similar stories of multiple young women I've met,  I composed "The thread."  To some of the facts and themes that came up in this recent conversation, I have added my impressions and imagination to express where, I have observed, she and many women like her have been, are now, and, hopefully, will be in the future, allowing the last thread of their self-righteousness to be cut and  replaced with Christ's righteousness. 

The Thread

Five years ago 

I started falling, 

and falling.

Two years ago 

I violated my conscience.

In a way unthinkable.

“But you need to know
I didn’t want to.

I didn’t mean to.” 

My inner Defense Attorney argued.

“How could I subject

An innocent one

To such cruelty as I had known?”

“How could I permit this new life to be,
and so to forever link, not only me, but us?”

“To him?”

“I had good motives.”

“It is OK.” 

“I am OK.”

These defense arguments,

The only thread

From which I still hang,

My breathing tube.

Take it away

And I fear suffocating in pain, 
or falling deeper,

Hitting bottom,

And breaking into a million pieces.

With this thread you might not judge me

Quite so harshly

You might see a little glistening glimmer

Of goodness,

Still in me

I, too, might believe.

My only hope that I am not totally corrupt

Not totally depraved

Not unworthy of anyone’s love

Not forsaken, accursed, and non-existent

Except for self-detestation,
This thread, 

My little piece of hope

Pure repentance

Threatens to steal away.

Then

Another's voice,

The Accuser’s

Drowns out the Defense Attorney’s:

“You unforgivable murderer!”

“You despicable piece of dirt!”

He screams and everyone around

Echoes his words,

An inescapable
hall of mocking mirrors..

Feelings of hatred and shame

Wash over me anew

Insanely, frantically

I run to escape the haunting images

and accusations reverberating 
mirror to mirror

I don’t care where to anymore.

I must drown the voice of the Accuser,

The relentlessly screaming Prosecuting Attorney

In my head and everywhere I look

But how to really escape

The truth of what I did?

The truth of who I am?

When not shouting,

 Even its whispers

Are penetrating 

My plugged ears, 

Claiming to be the core 

Of my person-hood. 

And you, friends? Family?

You want to block my running?

You DON’T understand

I need to push past you,

Push through you,

I do what I have to do

To survive

I don’t mean to hurt you, too.

But don’t you see?

Running is the only way.

Numbness is my only friend.

Is my only...

 Friend?

I ignore a deep haunting:

This friend 
I know

Is a masked enemy

So afraid to live without

This Deceiver; yet,

So afraid of the day

He might unmask

I knew the unveiling was coming, 

Someday...

And along with any voice 

Of reason,

 I pushed that thought away, too.

I didn't expect it would be

Today!

I fear to see 

Numbness
As he really looks

Behind his mask. 

But I must!

Cells of a new life

Multiply In my womb

A new chance to start afresh

To undo the past

To protect this one.

Such knowledge

Cracks the Deceiver's mask
His ugliness peers out.

"Would you, my "friend,"

harm this little one?" 

I jab. 

"You would do

what I never want to be a part of again!"

As accusatory as I am,

I know

It is I, I who made this evil alliance

As I drank and partied away my shame. 

In running from the mirrors, 

I had run to another.

It is my own ugliness beneath the mask

glaring at me again! 

I am so afraid.

What have I done?
Will this one survive
poison I've pumped into its veins?

Will the Accuser never

Be silenced?

  

True guilt 

Deserves 

True punishment, 

I conclude. 

I will call up Jury and Judge 

For mental court. 

“Guilty as accused!"

They cry.

I self-sentence. 

I self-punish.
I cut.

Finally

A sense of justice.

With justice, a semblance of peace.

“There must be a sacrificial retribution

And it must be me.” 

Over and over again

Court meets. 

Who cares anymore?
I cut again.

 Vacuous peace cycles with despair, 

To my slow destruction.

Then,  when least expected,

As if other-worldly
A new friend sings me a song 

That permeates my darkness!

A song I didn't know

existed

No one ever sang me 

such lyrics before:

“There was already a judgment

The sacrifice has been made

The shame has been borne

The price has been paid.

Amazing love, 

Your victory won

 It is over.

Walk free!

Even the broken remnants 

I will redeem!

If you let me.  

Will you let me?"

Now, yet dimly, 

 I see, 

It is not me, 

But sin in me.

I lift what I always feared

The fountain pen of true confession,

Of pure repentance.

Embracing the waterfall 

Of eternal love and forgiveness, 

I sign in agreement 
Listing
ALL my sin 
and total depravity.
No more masks.
No more thread needed!
Barely having finished signing my name
The water rushes forth, 
Swallows up the ink-named sins
In curls it swirls away and is gone 
Forever!
Clean parchment left
Signed, "Jesus." 
Clean parchment
Awaiting new words, a story of my newness.

Defense, Accuser, Masked Deceiver, Jury, and Judge,

In shock that I'd ever sever loyalties,

All flee, 

Shrinking away to nothingness.

I know the truth, 

And the truth

Has set me free! 

I let go of the thread of self-righteousness 

And Christ catches me with his righteousness
 I don't fall, 

I fly! 

And I breathe 
Heavenly air, 

Sweeter 

Than ever recalled!

by Rhonda Lynn Wilkinson 3/13/13