The Savior and Our Rescue

Death isn't a beautiful thing to be marveled at. It is the darkest and deepest pit of sorrow and we aren't able to escape from it. There was a point in my life that I was desperately trying to climb out of the pits of grief and I couldn't find a foothold. I wasn't strong enough and there was no light for me to see an escape. It was somehow all consuming and a void of nothingness. Eventually I stopped fighting and gave up. If it's possible to walk through life a corpse that was me. For me, life was more about death than it was about living.

Then, one day at the bottom of my pit I heard a faint voice. He had compassion for me and called me His daughter. He offered me an outstretched hand which I, at my weakest, grasped with the small amount of strength I had. His strength was enough. 

My Savior showed me the hope that only He could offer. Light flooded my whole being. I once searched aimlessly for a flicker, but I came up empty. Now, my Savior is the light of the world. My Father is the Father of lights and there is no shadow in Him. When I was hopeless and I needed rescue, I felt His presence. Life is in Him and death is powerless. I am full of hope. He saved me. 

My name is Amy and I'm truly alive because God in His infinite mercy chose to call me His daughter. I met Him my freshman year in high school and I've not spent a day of my life alone since then. Those of you that know God understand the peace that only God can give. I tried everything I could think of short of ending my own life to escape the darkness. I couldn't do it on my own. Grief can drag you so deep below the surface that you don't even understand hope. When I met God it was such a relief to stop fighting just to stay afloat or walking through life like I was already dead. I can't stop praising God for speaking to me at school that day when I didn't want to live anymore. 

The truth is that I'm not powerful, or strong, or even particularly good. None of us deserve the overwhelming, all consuming, steadfast grace of God. He loves us anyway. He didn't just rescue me from sadness or depression. God's Word tells us that we are dead in our sins, hopeless by our own choice, and in need of a savior. 

The irony about death is that the pain it causes teaches us about what it means to truly live. After I lost my dad I spent so many years walking around like I was the one who had died. Grief is an unimaginable pain until it's real. When you lose someone you love that grief comes to live inside of your chest and you can't make the ache go away no matter how much you fight or even if you surrender. 

The only one who is powerful enough to rescue you from your pain is the God who runs towards the prodigal child. The God who embraces us as we cry out Abba, Father. 

In the 11 years I've been a follower of God I've been comforted over and over again in my distress. I've been loved for who I am, but challenged to love more deeply than I ever understood possible. I am confident that I can trust God no matter the temporary pains of life. Though I still hurt from time to time, I am full of hope. The place in my chest that used to ache is now the place where the son of God resides. I have never been good enough nor will I ever be enough to deserve this love, but I am constantly overwhelmed and grateful that my Savior cares for me. 

If you find yourself in a similar place of pain and you feel hopeless, know that Jesus offers you the same hope that He's given me. Without Him you are a corpse and so was I. With Him, you can have eternal life and be called a son or daughter of God. That is peace. Don't stay in the endlessly dark pit of hopelessness. He will rescue you. 

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Ephesians 2:1-10