...and often, that is all we remember, and tragically, all we can manage to bring into our relationships.
"Because I was hurt, I cannot forgive that sin."
"Because you laughed at me, I only feel sorrow when I see you."
"Because I think I am better, you will always seem worse in my eyes."
We humans can become extremely adept at these games.
After all, when our concept of God hews more closely to the Japanese anime figure Uchuu Keiji Shaider ("Space Sheriff Shaider") than, say, Jehovah Roi ("The LORD is my Shepherd"), there can be an inordinate discomfort at the sheer thought of His 24/7 surveillance in the background, and our 24/7 sinfulness in the foreground.
And, as a balm to relieve that, there is the inescapable temptation to commit some kind of spiritual prestidigitation...Voila! The sinner is gone; lo and behold, in his place now stands a Little Sheriff.
And where is the sinner? Naturally, any man, woman or child unfortunate enought to be in the proximity of the Little Sheriff.
The truth is, though, that Max Lucado's complete statement includes a disclaimer of sorts: "...Yet because God is loving, He cannot dismiss you."
Now this is the part many of us fail to understand. Indeed, if only doctorate degrees could be conferred upon those who fail to understand this, I believe I shall be among the ranks of the most erudite and eminent. For alas, the only degrees I now have in my hand are degrees of intellectual unbelief and degrees of relational unkindness.
How can God really love...me? I don't even like myself half the time. Okay, most of the time. But then again, as many wise men have quietly whispered to our performance-weary, pretense-numbed hearts: He does not take into account our performance. Our mere existence is validation enough for him.
It's as if His hand were a weighing scale, and our weight, our calculated value is forever fixed: somewhere in a depth we cannot fathom, a height we cannot scale, a veritable continuum we cannot begin to see the end of either way.
Whether we choose to stay in His hands, or scamper off to some darknesses, the weight is constant. The moment we return to the scale, the weight is the same as when we were there, as when we left, and as when we run off again.
Because God is loving, I can imitate Him. Where gaps exist to make me an imitation of the most inferior kind, He can step in to bridge the divides. Where I am ready to give up, He gives more grace. Where I feel I have been dealt humanity's most colossal injustice, He kneels down low beside me and quietly opens His hand to show me where the nails went through, once upon a time, to become God's tool for humanity's justification.
He looks into my eyes and says,
"Because I am loving, and I am in you, then so are you:
capable of loving."
Nothing here of the galactic Sheriff.
But everything of the genuine Shepherd.
