We like to look down on people.
Harsh words, hard breaks, slips and mistakes that other people make.
Gossip makes us feel better about ourselves.
Whether we admit it or not, our hearts jump with a sly sense of glee when we can get ahead in the race of rightness.
With almost every sunrise, we feel the push out of bed to climb the ladder, to pass people on the staircase to success.
But what exactly will be waiting for us at the top once we've shoved all our companions down and raced past sleep, past joy, past beauty?
An open grave?
What words do you want chipped on your tombstone? "She beat them all to the grave?" "She won everything but friendship?"
or
"She laid down her life for her friends?" "She took the time to love people well?"
Life is not a race.
A well-lived life is more like a chase.
A chase after the glory and beauty of God. We chase love, friendship, belonging, sacrifice.
I don't want to beat this life. I want to catch it.
To cup it in these time-lined hands in this moment and in every second to eternity and stare in wonder.
And so often life is a different kind of chase.
It is God's pursuit of us as we race away to other lovers, pleasures, and painkillers.
Pursued us out of a poor woman's body and onto the musty floor of a cave on this planet of sin and death.
Pursued us as we sat rejected and broken by a well. When we were bleeding for long years and desperately reaching for hope in a stinky crowd. Chased us when we were rotting in leprosy and depression. Loved us when we were out of our minds. Had the dirtiest and the lowest of us hail His birth and spread the word.
Brought us back from the dead.
Followed us to the grave, stopped us at the door into hell, and took our place, nailed down on a tree amongst mocking laughter and rolling dice.
Gave His life for us as we rejected Him three times and ran from the scene.
We all want to avoid pain, all want to win. But in God's "upside down kingdom," it is those who lose their lives who save them. Those that stand and become the ladder for others, who lay down their pride for the love of the prostitute and pharisee, the coward and the outcast.
This is what Jesus did for us. This is our story. The story of redeeming love, of transforming relationship.
It is the greatest story ever told...
The faithless and the Faithful One.
God give us the guts and the grace to love those who are faithless to us.
