I like to draw things, mostly when I’m bored with routine work at my workplace, or when I am in those meetings we all attend where you have no role to play other than sit there and listen. Some of my drawings are pretty that sometimes I want to keep them, others though, are so ugly because I drew over them over and over that I don’t even want to look at them twice. I always use a pencil to erase the ugly part later if more space is needed. In some cases, they are almost completely erased, but usually they are not and leave undeniable marks on the papers. So one day, a colleague, an old fellow in his seventies, saw me trying to erase things and approached me and said, “why are you erasing them? This is who you are; it is your CV.” I was startled by what he said, his words struck me deep and left me thinking. And it is true; we are what we do, our actions are our CV, it is a letter read by everyone.

When the Apostle Paul wrote the above verse to the Corinthians, he was telling them, “you are our work, everyone who sees you will judge if we did well or failed.” People judge us from what we do, not from what we say or think. Our good intentions or sugary speeches are meaningless. Our actions are like an open book and say loud what is inside us. Though some people may hide their evil hearts behind good acts, it is not generally the case. Like a fruit tells the story of the tree, our actions reveal or tell our story. And our drawing papers are the hearts of the people. Whatever our actions are, we are writing in the lives of our children, our spouses, our community and the people we meet every day. Some of our drawings will leave a lasting impact that cannot be erased. Though we have the gift of repentance through the blood of the Lamb, repentance will give us a chance to a new start but will not take away the consequences of our actions. Yes, we still have a chance, even when we have messed up a hundred times. But again, as the Bible encourages us, we ’don’t use that grace as an excuse to do whatever our sinful nature dictates us to do.

While attending a friend’s wedding some years ago, a friend of the married couple gave them a blank book as their wedding gift. He told them that it was to be their storybook, where they would write their story the way they want it. Like that couple, every day, we are given a blank page to write our story. Make sure you pay attention to what you write and how you write it. Most of our actions cannot be undone, and you cannot unsay what you said. No matter how hard I tried to erase the ugly things I had written, the paper did not go back to the initial state. It was stained for life. I’m reminded of how Esau lost his birthright. He thought it was a joke, but the Bible says that later when he wanted to recover it, he could not even though he tried with much begging and tears; he could not change what he had done (Hebrews 12:16-17). This day is a gift of a blank book from God to write your story. Whether you live one day, hundred or thousand days, make up your mind to write a story that you will not be ashamed of, a story that you will not want to later delete, because once done, it cannot be undone. However, the truth is that without Jesus, we can do nothing. It’s only through him that we have the wisdom and the will to achieve that goal. 

I recently came across a story that made me think of Jesus’ love. It is about a farmer and one of his mares that he had rescued and adopted from an animal shelter. The quoted text was taken from one of Richard Wagamese’s books, Starlight, pp. 203-204. According to the author, “the fellow who had her [the mare] didn’t take care of her. She was sick and dehydrated, starving, beaten, skittish as hell. She wouldn’t even let me close for the longest time, and I had to keep her in a pen by herself because she was fearful of other horses. I’d come out here and roll up a blanket and spend the night with her. It took weeks, but she came to trust me and soon, I could feed her oats out of my hand. She let me take her out, and I’d walk her every day by the halter around the pasture because all the hurts had made her forget how to be a horse. Then I started to trot, then full out run and pretty soon when she got her strength back, I could turn her loose, and she’d gallop and play like the horse she was meant to be. I ’didn’t try to change her at all. I just let her find herself in the love I was giving. Me and that little mare moved into it together, and she became a good horse. It didn’t make all the hurt she felt disappear. It didn’t change anything that came before. It just made her able to forget and live a different way. The way she was meant to.”

The more I read this fictional story, the more I saw the image and character of Jesus throughout the text. When Jesus came, he found us in a deplorable state. We had been beaten and abused for many years under the power of the devil and his servants. We didn’t even know who we were, and yet we were created to be overcomers, rule with authority, run and gallop like horses. We had lost the hope of living the life God had designed us for. We lived from one failure to another. Jesus’ work of restoration was an act of love. He Just loved us, an unconditional love as a good shepherd who lays his life for the sheep. He did not try to change us overnight, but slowly he made us find ourselves in his love. He did not take away the hurt we suffered in the hands of the devil, but he made us forget it even existed. We moved in that journey together with him all the steps of the way. He is still moving with us on that journey until the day he will present us to the Father in the state that God had in mind for us. David experienced the love of the Shepherd, so he wrote, “the Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want” (Psalm 23:1). He continued explaining why. Because the Shepherd will take care of his physical needs; he will give him protection from the enemies; he will not let him get lost along the way; he will always be there for him. That is the love of the Shepherd.

As I thought about the story above, I was reminded of Mary of Magdalen. When Jesus first met Mary, she had already lived many years under the abuse of Satan and the power of sin. She was at the point of being stoned to death (John 8:1-11). Jesus did not rush her with too much preaching and admonishing. He just let her understand that he loved her the way she was, but at the same time, he made her realize it was time for her to change her way of living. A few days later, that same woman was back to see Jesus with an alabaster of expensive oil (Luke 7: 36-50). It took her so much courage to overcome the stigma as a sinful woman and get close to a “prophet.” It took her courage to decide to go into a men’s assembly when women at that time were not allowed to. But that is what the unconditional love of God can do to us. It gives us wings to do things, to overcome the stigma, to defy the cultural barriers or other barriers to go to Jesus and allow Him to restore us to what God had for us in the first place. Did you know that that same Mary of Magdalen is among the first preachers of the good news of the gospel? Yes, she was the first to be told by angels of Jesus’s resurrection. Yes, she was the first to see the resurrected Jesus. Yes, she was transformed by the Shepherd’s unconditional love and lived a fulfilled life the way she was meant to. If you allow Jesus to work in you, you will also experience that kind of life, a total victory over your past failures, mistakes and hurts, you will receive a total restoration. 

I always think that only a parent can comprehend or at least have a small understanding of the love of God the Father, of how much God loves us his children. When you become a father or a mother, you start to truly appreciate the love of God; at least, that is what happened to me. When you first hold a tiny human being in your arms who has no understanding of day or night, or knowledge of left or right, who depends on you for absolutely everything and for whom you are ready anytime to give your life, that is when you realize in your mind and say that if God loves me as I love my child, then I am in good hands. When we become parents, we also come to realize how much our parents loved us even though sometimes we did not understand them or believe in their love.

Can you imagine a mother dropping her infant from her hands? Impossible. So impossible is God letting us fall from his hands (Isaiah 49:15). In God’s eyes we are like that infant. We can’t do anything without him, and we absolutely depend on him. Even though we may deceive ourselves and think we have got it all figured out, we can’t distinguish right from left without him (John 15:5). God loves us so much, even if we might not understand or see that love in the way we want to see it. He showed his love once and for all by giving us what was most precious to him, his only Son. The good news today is that God is always looking out for us. At times, it is difficult to understand God or trust in his love; at such moments, it is wise to stop trying to understand and instead try blind trust. Don’t responsible parents wake up in the morning and work hard to feed their children, clothe them, plan for their studies, take them to a doctor when they are not well, and do so many other things responsible parents do? Jesus said, “If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him” (Matthew 7:11).

Nothing has more power in the life of a person than the fact of knowing that they are loved. A child from a loving family is different from a child who did not receive love from their parents. The first is always, or at least most of the time, confident, happy and optimistic, always expecting good things to happen to them. The second is worried, expecting the worst, and feels that he constantly has to fight to survive. Mistrust and suspicion are his words of order. Trusting God’s love for us elevate our lives to that level of the loved child who is confident, happy and optimistic for the future. You are the loved son and daughter of your heavenly Father, let the assurance of God’s love change the way you live and behave; walk with confidence as a loved child of the Most High. In this world where everything has been turned upside down, where there is nothing reliable anymore, the love of God is the only anchor that keeps us from total wreckage. Trust in that love and your life will never be the same.