exchange

1 Corinthians 15:35-49.
We try so hard to be immortal, invulnerable, to rise above the predations of a fallen world that beset us from the outside and betray us from within. God sent his beloved Son to assume the form of the only innocent man who ever lived for the purpose of being tortured to death, and He did it for no other reason than to cancel out the debt we could never pay. And he sought to cancel that debt because only then could He lavish on us what we so doggedly yet despairingly strive to secure for ourselves.
Sown in dishonour and weakness, raised in honour and power. In seeking strength and honour we cling to the very things that keep us from them. Sincerely, perhaps, but still clinging. It is such a job to get to the point where we even realise that, and then there's choosing what to do with that realisation.
When I obtain something at great personal cost, I will defend and retain it relentlessly, even if it is miserably inadequate for its intended purpose - unless something better can be had. What God offers is not only vastly better, but free for the asking - or almost. It will cost me that which He seeks to replace. And that is terrifying when it has already cost so much. I can easily believe that what He offers is better - until faced with discarding what I have in favour of it. I have invested so much of myself in these things, and now He strolls in to toss them out? All they have cost me screams in protest - unless I take a good hard look at what His offer to me has cost Him. And when I can finally choke down the last of my shame, I find it a little easier to remember that He only seeks to toss those things to make room to give me Himself - and then what else could I possibly need? What have I ever accomplished by my fuming and fretting? Hasn't He prevailed in spite of all my efforts? Have my seemingly bottomless defects and ineptitude ever thwarted His plans for me of good and hope and a future?
The terror and the beauty of it is that I depend on Him even for the faith I need to let go, and the grace to cover my lack of it. The amazing thing is that He understands, that even having paid such a monstrous price for His gift to me, He sees my struggles and losses and what they have cost me - and He still cares. But only to the end of setting me free from them, of bringing me to the point where I value His sacrifice so immeasurably more than any paltry cost I could have paid. All the things I have fought for and invested in will only retain their value if they are lost in and to Him so He can raise them by the same power that raised Him from the dead - the very resurrection He would share freely with anyone willing to accept it, if only we can let ourselves die.
I pray He knows as He knows His own Self that this is what I want more than anything else to be true about me - that I who was dead in futility and weakness am now raised in His love and strength, that I have attained the adoption as His son for which He has predestined me, and that I reflect His glory in the unique manner for which He created me. The only thing worth fearing is failing to receive that indescribable gift from Him, and the only way I wish to be free from that fear is to receive it. And there is no one on this earth whom I would wish to miss out on that.