The Consuming Life part four

If I were able to look from above, to observe from a vantage point on high, my foot steps on the path that shows my followship of Jesus they would probably look more like skipping than walking. Rather than a unbroken series of feet on the ground pace by pace trail that faithfully trails Jesus’ own footsteps, you would find omissions, places where the footsteps disappear, veer of the path in new and irregular directions, oh there is another one back on the path.

Sometimes there would be steps I wish you could see, I wish you could have been there when I took that courageous, self giving and amazing step. Other prints, I wish the wind would cover like tracks in the desert sand, prints whose existence and consequence could be ignored, denied, forgotten never to be discovered.

Every variation, deviation from the path is a warning sign, a blinking caution like on the side of the street marking a treacherous ditch to be avoided. Hind sight might be 20-20, but it doesn’t mean the path ahead will be true. Every skip, omission is designated offering to someone or something other than Jesus to whom I have promised my life. Every new path is an indicator that I have laid down my life for someone or something, a signal that I have given my greater love to a less worthy cause.

Isaac Watts in the early 1700's wrote, When I Survey The Wonderous Cross. It comes to mind now as I look at my footprints and look up to Jesus who gave his life for me, his friend. His words, "Love so amazing, so divine, Demands my soul, my life, my all," come to mind. There is no harsh rebuke, no punitive thoughts here only a reminder that he gave it all for me, and I want to give that kind of love. I want to live a life that is ultimately redemptive for those I care most, and those whose path I cross on the way. There is a reminder that the way to love and be loved his way is to live my life his way, to quickly return from those other ways when I wonder, to lay down my life in his path and not those others.

Charles Wesley wrote something like 6000 hymns. It is told that he said he would have given up all his hymns to have written this one. Must have said what Wesley felt.  .  . it says what I feel when I look up and see where I should be. 

On which the Prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.

Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
Save in the death of Christ my God!
All the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them to His blood.

See from His head, His hands, His feet,
Sorrow and love flow mingled down!

Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,
Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

His dying crimson, like a robe,
Spreads o’er His body on the tree;
Then I am dead to all the globe,
And all the globe is dead to me.

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all

Listen here . . . its one of those funky online keyboards but it a good reminder of the melody.