Friday, September 5, 2008

Real Life Magic

When you do something incredibly sinful and selfish, and then after all the necessary repentance and horrible consequences you see something wonderful happen because of that sin... it makes you doubt things, like if the predestination thing means that God makes us sin or God doesn't stop us from sinning because something Ultimately Good will happen. This is particularly hard when you've committed some devastating piece of work that, while it was occurring, hurt you and the people around you tremendously. Just because the final outcome was "good" can't - can't -possibly mean that God orchestrated the whole fiasco. I worried over this with a friend, and she used a word that I hadn't even thought of before - redemption. Making good out of bad.

Maybe the whole idea of God "redeeming sin" means that He can create beauty out of everything, that He can transform anything, and that He is ultimately an artist who can see glory everywhere, and, once we stop trying to make Rembrandt out of mud pies, He can take the mud and breath life into it. While it is in our hands, it will always be mud. Once He takes it, He can "redeem" it - transform it, reincarnate it, magically and impossibly make something beautiful out of our worst sins.

My sin was not orchestrated by Him, thank God, in order to bless me today. But once He took my sin, He transformed it into something of unrecognizable beauty. "Redeemed."

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