An Angst in Three Acts

-1-

Can a person truly change? Is there an unchanging core at the center of my being that will always be the sinful, bloody mess of a person?

I've looked into my soul, and all I see is selfishness and want. I’ve stared into these lying eyes in the mirror and called their bluff. I see the blood under the fingernails where I forgot to wash. I can name the victims and causes that have suffered under my treachery.  I know what I have been. I have been a monster.

-2-

Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full on his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace. What am I to think of what the writings of a thousand lifetimes could not contain if all the forest trees were pens and all the oceans ink? Who is man that you are mindful of him, or the son of man that you take notice of him?

Holiness stretches across the horizon like a blinding ocean. I swim through the shallows of love and shrink in comparison to the beautiful perfection.  I find myself enveloped in warmth and compelled to dive. Further up and further in.

I am a drop in the ocean, a whisper in a hurricane, a flicker in the night sky, a pebble in the wilderness. You are the ocean, you are the hurricane, you are the night, you are the wilderness. I am completely enveloped.

-3-

Can a person truly change? What use do you have for this thing? Any good I do I can only attribute to you. You could have done it without me. Why did you use me? Remember the monster?

I never had a conversion. I’ve always been “yours.” Technically, I’ve always been saved. I never was in need of redemption, as I was already redeemed. How can this disgusting pile of self-serving sin be a new creature? If this is the new one, then what was the old one like?

I believe I see the flaw in my thinking. Redemption is not binary, and salvation is not a moment. A child is not born fully grown, the second time around is much the same.

You intend to change me. I still don’t understand why. You don’t need me, but you want me. I just don’t get it.

When I speak of the analogy of the wave, I never thought of myself as the shoreline.