Please look into my eyes and then tell me if I am evil, or if I am deceived, or if you must judge me as a sinner in need of the cold shoulder.  Look into and discern my heart — is it not the same as yours?  Did you once love me?  Did you at least like me?  Ask me those forbidden questions you don’t dare ask. Why instead do you rub words together in hidden places, blow winds of doubt, and keep adding tinder to a fire that will destroy me in the eyes of others, but benefit you?  It would be better for your cause of truth and justice if you simply embraced me warmly, looked me in the eye, and acknowledged the light in me as you once did, and then, my friend, if you still see a speck in my eye to carefully and patiently draw it out.  Instead you spread sparks of disgruntled disappointment and suspicion from house to house and person to person, turning the whole world against me.

Now my eyes, that you did not see, weep. Where are you my friend?  Why are you hiding from me?

I know this is a sad post, but I wrote it in quickly upon an unusual moment when I felt a deep “entering in” of the pain Jesus may have felt when his friend Judas stopped believing the best of Him, and gave him a hypocritical kiss of friendship.  

But there is another layer to what I wrote, as I had a friend at the time who was suffering something I too am familiar with.  It’s not easy, but for a disciple of Christ, there may be a time when someone who we have had sweet fellowship with will choose to believe the worst, and take matters in their own hands to publicly humiliate us, or surprisingly cut us off from their warmth.  To “take up the cross,” as Christ did, is to walk in humility at times like this, and to resist the temptation to nurse the wound with pity, gossip, or fire-for-fire.  Again, to “take up the cross” is, in the midst of our hurt, to exemplify a spirit of hope, always, that the one at enmity against us will repent and see us through new eyes of love.

“Father forgive him.  Forgive her.  They don’t know what they are doing – and will realize it later.”

The Father’s heart is one that is always running toward reconciliation.

Jesus came to reveal this heart to us.

Pamela