Can you remember what shattered you? Do you know what I mean? That moment in childhood when you intuitively knew that this wasn’t Eden anymore? What broken shard pierced the canopy of your innocent understanding of life with its first thundercloud? The moment when your heart felt its first devaluating cut of your significance? Maybe it was a rejection of a jealous sibling who resented your presence, or the first day of school when someone called you stupid or ugly. Worse yet, perhaps it was at the hands of a trusted yet abusive adult or parent. Somewhere, at some point, we all discover, like our Garden parents, that we are naked with shame. That we just don’t quite measure up. Then, deep inside our personalities begin to take shape with this sense of unworthiness nagging at us and leaving us with a need that we can’t quite explain.
You know you’ve felt it from time to time. We’ve all been affected by the Fall of long ago. Most of us push it down deep and then pour cement over it as though it were Fukushima. And, as we have seen, that hasn’t worked so well for them either. The neurotoxins start seeping up to the surface and the poison fills our minds. We can’t manage this sense of unworthiness through containment or denial, busyness or mindless distractions, try as we may. These are just bandaids that eventually peel back and fall off —leaving the wound exposed. We need our innocence restored. But, how do you put the genie back in the bottle? There is no “undo” icon for the soul. Or is there? Can the shattered be raised whole? Can the broken be restored?
The ground shook hard with the power of heaven as the outstretched arms of the Cross weighed heavy with shame. All the thunderclouds descended —piercing with rejection, anger, abuse and taunts —straining against the flesh of innocence. A Life for THE life. The humiliated became accepted, the abandoned became welcomed, the unworthy became loved and the shattering was undone. Lift up your head! Do you see how much you are loved?
”For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world but to save the world through him.” John 3:16-17 NLT