Mushroom Clouds & Soccer

To my readers,

This past week I received some very important information with the rest of the country.  Apparently it was the Women’s World Cup, more so USA was in the finals.  It was quite a journey watching these underdogs fight there way to the finals.  Though they played hard, the USA lost in the final round.  What surprised me is what followed.

The metaphorical mushroom cloud of social media explosion was astounding.  So many negative things started to be typed out.  One minute we went from biting our nails rooting for USA, to downright degrading them. A week ago we didn’t know the names of the USA women’s soccer team, but now our heroines had become our garbage. 

I was really troubled by this. We are really hard on people when they make a mistake or don’t live up to our expectations of what they should be doing.  We are often the first person to cheer them on when things are good but the first to degrade them when things are bad. 

All I could ask myself was ‘What if God was this way with us?’

Honestly, think about if God only loved us when things were good? Then imagine, when things were bad God said, “Look at how you messed up! See you later!” This is exactly what we do to people everyday. 

There is a letter in the New Testament that Paul writes to Christians in Rome.  In this letter he writes:

“Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good.  But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.” Romans 5:7-8, NLT. 

We treat people terrible when they make a mistake, but God doesn’t.  In fact, it was while we were at our worst that God did his greatest work: He sent Jesus to pay our debt by dying on a cross.  Though we wouldn’t be willing to do, Jesus was willing to love us regardless of what we had done or who we were.  To him, we are all dirty rotten sinners, but we are dirty rotten sinners that he loves.  It is this love that bought us freedom.  It’s this love that compels Jesus to die for sinners, undeserving of love. 

If Jesus didn’t hold our past or our mistakes against us, why do we continually do it to those around us? 

Simply,

Tex G.M. Rule

But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.” Romans 5:8, NLT.