the good news

Rider on the White Horse by Robert Wright

It’s dark. I can only see my fellow humans as dim, shadowy shapes in a sick reddish light. I hate them, and at the same time I cower among them, using them as a fleshly shield against the pain that never lets up. I’m so used to it now that I have almost grown numb: the moment-by-moment stings of my master’s cruel prod, which I can’t stop running into even though it hurts every time. It’s like a drug, destroying me even as it wraps me tighter in its grip, and I know there is no hope. This is my existence. This was yesterday, this is today, this will be tomorrow. Darkness. Pain. The haunting, but somehow also stupid, moans of the bodies around me as they, too, endlessly run back into the stinging prod.

Every once in a while, I’ll watch blankly as one of these human shapes strikes down another in a cold rage. Death is a near and familiar companion. Sometimes it almost seems like a friend. 

What’s that? Something breaks up the endless chaos of red and shadow. It’s white, even brilliant–it hurts my unaccustomed eyes, piercing straight through me like a knife-beam of light, a thing I have never seen. I blink, but it’s still there, getting closer and bigger and spilling radiant white light over this shadowy valley of death. The bodies around me crush in and scatter like rats, desperate to avoid revelation, desperate to hide from whatever it means to be seen. I instinctively cower back, too, even though I can feel the prod sink into my spine. It’s too bright. It’s too much. I can’t see. I cover my face with my hands and fall facedown on the ground, stumbling over the bodies of the dead, thinking that if only I can be dead, too, I will be spared this probing, blinding light–whatever it is.

Then there’s a voice.

It’s no voice I have ever heard. It doesn’t hiss or snarl, like my masters. It doesn’t moan, like my fellow humans. This voice thunders.

“Get up! You, follow Me!”

I am shaking uncontrollably, but this is a command that overpowers every instinct of self-preservation in my body. I instantly rise to my feet. Still shielding my face from the light, I look up, seeking the Source of this voice.

And in that moment the light shifts from blinding to brilliant. I can see. I can see Him. He is a King, a Conqueror, riding astride a white horse. He wields a sword, but the blade is clean; only his robes are dripping with blood–blood that seems to have come from a wound in His own side, from scars in His own hands.

There are words written into His robe. “KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.”

He rides forward until I can feel His horse’s breath on my neck. I am still shaking, but I can’t move–can’t so much as bow my head. It’s as if, by seeing Him, I can suddenly see myself clearly.

And I am dead. Dead in my trespasses and sins. I cannot escape this hell that I live in or this master of sin and death that I serve. The pain that I was numb to moments ago is now excruciating, and it’s only sheer terror that keeps me from writhing in agony in His presence.

As if separated from my own body, I am vaguely aware that He has leaned down and taken my hand in His, and somewhere in the recesses of my mind I become conscious of the bloody hole in the middle of His palm.

He speaks again at last, but this time, His voice is as gentle as a rippling brook. “Little girl, I say to you, get up.”

And there falls away from my eyes something like scales. My vision becomes clear for the first time in my existence. I can see the massive army behind the King, a cavalry all clothed in white. And I realize why He is here: to win this dead hellscape for His kingdom. I can either surrender or die.

And I have already been dead once. Whatever this King might do to me, I would rather be on His side than return to the reign of death.

“I surrender.”

Instead of binding my wrists and banishing me from His presence, wretch that I am, I hear Him give orders that I be clothed in white and given a mount. The whole army breaks into cheers of celebration, and I feel tears of what must be joy stream hot down my face as the embrace of what must be love wraps around my soul. I am alive, and I am at peace. I am His.

I fall into the ranks of the rest of the army. We are forward-bound behind our King, spilling the light into more dead and dark places, gathering up everyone who will surrender on our way and welcoming them into what must be a family.

My King has come, and He is taking back all Creation from the power of sin and death. My allegiance is to Him now—Him alone. Hallelujah.

the Lord will provide

Each time I read through the Bible, a different theme sticks out to me. In the past, it’s been the fearsome nature of God or the lasting pattern of Sabbath rest. It’s as if each time I travel from one end of this amazing tapestry to the other, a different color stands out against the rest, begging me to pause and see it and let it seep into me.

(This is one of the major reasons that I’m an advocate of reading through the Bible at a fast pace, and often. Learn more here.)

We are just beginning Leviticus in Bible180 2020, and the color that I can’t stop seeing woven through every scene and story and law so far is the color of God’s wildly generous grace. The deeper I wade into the story of the Bible with each passing day, the more this particular hue splashes over my understanding of every verse. Stories that I have read and studied for a lifetime have become new since I noticed, as if for the first time, the color of grace running through them.

One such story is one that I, admittedly, used to hate: Genesis 22, which my Bible titles, “The Offering of Isaac.”

Every interaction I’ve had with this chapter, whether in Sunday school or in a sermon or on my own, has left me with something like this as a key takeaway: WATCH OUT BECAUSE GOD IS GOING TO ASK YOU TO DO SOMETHING TERRIBLE AND IF YOU DON’T DO IT YOU’RE NOT A REAL CHRISTIAN!

I can still feel the fear and guilt sweeping over me from all the times, as a kid, I thought about what I would do if God asked me to literally sacrifice something I loved so much. I remember lying awake at night in tears of anxiety, afraid He would demand my sister or my parents or my horse. This story painted God as an cruel and unpredictable tyrant who could turn my life upside down on a whim, and if I protested, I’d go to hell.

What my painfully black-and-white child’s mind could not discern through the chaotic din of fear was that this is not a story about my performance under God’s tyranny, but about God’s wildly generous grace in the face of my lack.

God asked Abraham to offer his only son whom he loved, Isaac, as a burnt offering on Mount Moriah. Abraham rose early in the morning, packed the supplies, took his son, and obeyed. And yet when Isaac asks, “Where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” Abraham does not say, “You’re it.”

He says, “God will provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son” (Genesis 22:8).

I have spent my life marveling at Abraham’s faith and courage to obey when the implications of that obedience were so heavy. I thought, “This is what it means to be a Christian—to be willing to do whatever it takes to make God happy.” I was wrong.

Abraham’s faith and courage don’t come from within himself, from a steel-willed determination to do whatever it takes. His faith is not set in his ability to pass the test. His faith rests, instead, in the generosity of God to provide for Abraham what he himself does not have to give: a lamb for the burnt offering.

This is what it means to be a Christian: to trust that God has provided for Himself the sacrifice that His holiness requires, because even the very best we have to give is not adequate.

Abraham was willing to give his only son, whom he loved—but God provided for Himself a ram in a thicket instead, a foreshadowing of the day when He would offer His Son, His only Son, whom He loves, for us.

Abraham called the name of that place The Lord Will Provide, as it is said to this day, “In the mount of the Lord it will be provided.”

Genesis 22:14

I have learned that following Jesus does sometimes test me beyond what I believe I can endure. But it is not a pass/fail examination to measure how well I perform and whether I deserve the name “Christian.” It is rather a testing by fire, as if of metal—it reveals what is in me, and purifies me of weaknesses. Christ took the ultimate pass/fail test when He generously drank the cup of death so that my standing before God need never fall into question again.

God is not an unpredictable tyrant, and that is exactly why Abraham could obey this unthinkable command. He already knew God’s promise to multiply Isaac into a great nation, so even as Abraham himself was being tested, his obedience counter-tested God to uphold His word. He knew God for who He is, and counted on Him to remain consistent with His character. It was never about Abraham’s special abilities or extra-strong faith or track record of obedience at all—it was always about who God is.

Wildly, generously gracious.