One Saturday morning while at Adoration at my small rural church, I picked up a little booklet and read a reflection called He Came to Call Sinners.
It read, in part:
In the hour of our agony, in that hour of truth when, at the moment of our appearance before God, we perhaps review in our memory our whole life, with so many miseries and weaknesses, so many failings and falls, I hope that with contrite hearts but immense confidence, we shall say to Jesus, “All this, I give You. Did You not come to earth to seek out my sins and take them upon Yourself?”
I had a momentary vision in my mind when I read those words.
In my mind I was walking with Jesus on a seashore. He was walking ahead of me and I suddenly stopped. I hesitated to continue following Him as I realized how unworthy I am of following Him. All my sins and failures flooded my mind–the many times I’ve failed to love Him as He deserves… the work He’s placed before me that I’ve failed to do… the times I’ve failed to love others as He wanted me to… the many times I’ve doubted His love and care…
I am, I realized, (GULP!)…
… so unworthy of Him and His love…
And suddenly Jesus stopped… it’s as if he knew I’d stopped following Him… He turned around… He looked at me with those all-knowing, kind, merciful eyes of His. He smiled. He KNOWS! His eyes lit up with love. He spread His arms wide and simply said,
“Aren’t you coming?”
I fled my fearful frozen spot and flew across the sand into His arms.
In that instant, I knew–I KNEW beyond a shadow of a doubt that despite all my mistakes, doubts, failures and sins, Jesus has forgiven me.
I am . . . worthy . . .
What love the Lord has for each one of us! The only thing that keeps us from Him is our own inability to believe, understand and comprehend that love.
So often when I contemplate that moment of meeting Jesus at the end of my life, I think only of my faults–the things I just can’t seem to let go of. Honestly? I rarely think of the GOOD deeds I’ve done. Those seem to not even register in my memory.
So the vision I was graced with that morning was pure gift.
“Aren’t you coming?”
Jesus WANTS us to follow Him–in all our unworthiness: mistakes, failures, warts and all.
He’s just waiting for you to run into His arms.
What are you waiting for?