At the beginning of the week we gave each student a white strip of sheet as a reminder of God’s story and a physical symbol of wanting to live within his story (based on a text in Deuteronomy where the people of God are encouraged to tie the words of God on their wrists, etch them into their door frames…). Then we talked about how we bear the image of God - and a large white sheet what placed out - and our small strips represent that we carry the imago dei with us. The night of the conflict these strips have gotten a little dirty due to wearing them through activities. That night we talked about the conflict between God and us - essentially we resist and rebel against the Creator God who longs for relationship with us. We went through the ten commandments and marked how each person has been doing keeping up with God. Each mark represents struggles.

They have had over 24 hours to process the conflict - with the sin in our life, how will we return back to God’s story - relationship with Him. Some of the students struggled with this. We processed as a group, how are we going to resolve the conflict. Answers ranged from across the board: “try harder not to sin,” “God will forgive us,” and more.

Why should God forgive us? How should he respond? He has provided so much and it pleases Him to be our Father and care taker…and we, in our sin, reveal that we think we can do it better.

And so God, in response to the sin/conflict in our life, sent His Son. He came into the world loving sinners and people far from God, he healed the sick, brought life to the dead…and how did they respond? They killed him. How do we respond to Jesus? Our sin reveals that we killed him.

And so while we were sinners, hostile to God, filled with mercy God sent Jesus to offer a way back into God’s story. But, this way back means we would have to face the cross straight on. The cross reveals two things. 1) The Cross reveals the horror of our sin. That the only way our sinfulness could be dealt with was for Jesus to take it upon himself with the torment of the cross. This should break our hearts - our self-centeredness and the death that it caused to God’s own Son should lead to repentance. 2) The cross reveals the unstoppable love of our Father in heaven…that we should have been left out of His story to our own wicked ends…but instead, God put into place a rescue mission to offer a chance to come back to Him.

So, we invited the students, if they have been trying to save themselves, try harder, work out their own salvation or just expect that God would forgive them because he forgives everyone to meet Jesus at the cross - perhaps for the first time. All that was asked was that they place their dirty strips on the cross as a symbol of what their sin cost Jesus and then take communion as a declaration that Jesus is the turning point, the nourishment, the climax of my life.

Then we sang our hearts out to Jesus for being our Marvelous Light, Our King and Savior.

Oh Happy Day!

1. Thank you for taking the time to blog and sharing the the truth of gods awsome love and grace.I pray all of you have a safe trip home.

   Comment by eric t. — June 19, 2008 @ 10:18 pm

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