Terrified

My sisters and I (plus one adopted sister) were at a timeshare together one year, having a perfectly delightful time.  Late at night I became gradually aware of shouting and pleading and other outcries from the stairwell outside our door.  Earlier that evening we had met a ‘nice’ couple at a restaurant. It turned out they were staying right across the hall from us. As my fuzzy brain began to discern the wife was being abused right outside my door, terror overcame me.  The extent of the evil hovering just outside was palpable.  I knew I should rush out and stop this man and protect this woman. Yet I was frozen in fear. I was just glad our door was locked so that evil couldn’t attack me or my sisters.

If you had asked me previous to this experience what I would do if I heard some crying for help outside my house, I would have in no uncertain terms told you I would immediately rush to her aid, if only by calling the police (which might, unfortunately, be too late).  However, I did none of these things. I couldn’t even remember the name of the development in which we were staying or its address.  I was paralyzed with fear and found myself in total self-preservation mode. One of my sisters also awoke and came down and we sat huddled together in terror that seemed totally disproportionate to the event, as insidious as is all spousal or child abuse. You would have thought Nazi officers were about to break through our door. Even the next morning, as we headed home, there was a heavy spirit hanging over us. We neither laughed nor joked until we finally started praying together and singing praise songs on our journey.

When Jesus fell prostrate to the ground in the garden of Gethsemane and sweat blood through his
forehead, all the powers of evil were trying to keep Him from carrying through with what the Enemy
knew would totally defeat him and save us for all eternity.  I can’t even conceive of what that was like.  But I had the tiniest, minuscule taste of it and of my own weakness and selfishness in the face of the desperate need of another. That Yeshua persevered through it without turning back, despite unimaginable opposition, fear, sorrow, depression and grief....bearing all our sins for all time and combatting overwhelming evil, makes me fall at His feet in gratefulness and heart-wrenching love. To blithely take His sacrifice for granted with spoken religious platitudes and self-absorbed lifestyles is to cheapen what it took for Him to stand back up in the garden and walk that horrific road for us

I no longer (or at least less frequently)  judge those I hear about who haven’t done what they should to help others. I hope and pray for the fortitude and grace from God to act differently next time I face
a similar situation. Even Peter the Rock vowed his own strength would be sufficient and then failed miserably in the test.  His three-fold affirmation of love following his three-fold denial of Yeshua was not a new vow but rather a confession of the state of his heart. Humbling yields an awareness of our own inadequacies and at the same time a greater appreciation for how willing ADONAI is not only to forgive, but also to lift us up and give us His own strength for the tests coming our way. He knew Peter would not fulfill His vow, but afterward He lifted him up from his failure and made him head of His Body, because He knew his heart.  What hope this should give us after our own broken vows,
most of which we should never have made in the first place. We should vow neither in judgment of others nor in presupposition of our own strength of character. Let our Yes be yes  and our No be no,
yet with complete awareness of our own fallability. May we rely on His  heart’s desire to  carry out His saving action through us in every situation; to make us right, just, and effective in the face of another’s need, knowing that we are all sometimes as Paul confessed: desiring to do one thing yet doing another.
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“Then Peter declared, ‘Though they all are offended and stumble and fall away because of you, I will never do so.’ “   —Matthew 26:33
 “Then all the disciples deserted him and, fleeing, escaped.”  —Matthew 26:56
“Just let your ‘yes’ be  a simple yes and your ‘no’  be a simple no. Anything more than this has its origin in evil.” —Matthew  5:37
“I don’t understand my own behavior: I don’t do what I want to do. Instead, I do the very thing I hate.”  —Romans 7:15