I start this blog with a quote from the book ' Summer of my life ', written by Yvette Manessis Corporo (Publisher Luitingh-Sijthoff).
“The sea never judged her; it only welcomed her and even invited her.
It didn't matter to the sea that Daphne's worn swimsuit was too big because it was irretrievably stretched by the new curves of her cousin Popi. She didn't care that even now, thousands of miles away from the restaurant, Daphnes had the vague, persistent smell of fat.
None of that matter here. The sea baptized her every summer and made everything new, fresh, clean.”
You are loved as you are...
The above part in this book is very nice. It is not my custom to read books that are not Christian, but I see in this piece a Christian message.
In this story, the sea stands for Jesus Christ, in my view. And then I read that Jesus says to us, that He never judges us, but welcomes us in His love. He doesn't care how we dress. Whether we wear very nice, new clothes or worn off rags.
He loves the man in that fancy suit and the woman in her fancy suit. However, he loves the drifter who has no money for rags and the lady who sells her body for money and is dressed only in scarce lingerie.
And you; ordinary citizen who sits in between and just goes to the store to buy clothes, but is also grateful if you can get clothes or shoes from a giveaway corner on Facebook and quietly buy clothes at the circular store; you too are worth as much to God.
He loves you and you can come as you are. He doesn't care that your hair smells, although He allows you to shower with soap and shampoo and then put on nice clean clothes. His love for you doesn't depend on that.
None of these things matters to Him in that sense. It's not that He doesn't care. He certainly interests him. He is concerned with your fate, but his attitude towards you is not determined by it. In the bath of rebirth and the baptism of water you are washed clean for Him. You're all new and clean. ... thanks to the sacrifice He made for you
That's what Jesus wants to do for you. He wants to wash you clean with His precious blood. The red blood makes you white.
I compare it to a pot of Tipp-Ex. If we make a mistake on paper, we can, as it were, undo it with Tipp-Ex. It dries up, and then we can write over it. We come up with the right word.
That's the way it is with Jesus. We kneel down at His cross and confess our sins. We acknowledge that He died for those sins. We walk to the grave, where He was laid down and find out that it is empty. Jesus is risen. The blood on the cross has dried up.
At the bottom of that cross, right next to where you were kneeling, lies a heavy stone. With a marker, you write down everything you've done wrong and ask forgiveness for those things.
Then Jesus comes to you. He smiles at you, points at the blood, and then he picks up the stone. He turns it around, but not before He tells you that you have been forgiven and that He has borne your sins; that God no longer sees them.
The side where your sins stand is now at the bottom. You're not able to turn the stone around anymore. You tend to try again, because it's so hard to let it go and really believe that Jesus did this for you. But the more He speaks to you and reads you in His Word, the more you come to the conviction that it really is gone. Your sins are laundered and you grow in your relationship with God.
Conclusion: God loves His children
Conclusion: God loves His children
You come to a beautiful conclusion:
Nothing or no one can remove me from the love of God. You no longer need to sin because you love God so much and know that He loves you much more.
The road to heaven is open. You have become a child of God and He will clothe you with a beautiful cloak and a king's crown.
