Jesus thought of you, above all

 “You lived to die 

rejected and alone

(…)

You took the fall

and thought of me

Above all”

 (from Michael W. Smith’s song Above All)

  

To me it has always been a mystery how the Lord could possibly spend even one second thinking about me..

Psalms 40 verse 5 says: 

“Many, O LORD my God, are the wonders which You have done, and Your thoughts toward us; there is none to compare with You if i would declare and speak of them, they would be too numerous to count”

and Psalms 139 verse 17:

“How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them”.

Psalms 144 verse 3 asks the question which i can relate to, very much “O Lord, what is man, that You take knowledge of him? Or the son of man, that You think of him?”

Yeah, i wonder: who am i that the Lord thinks about me?

There’s a LOT to say about this question, but for now i just want to leave it be, as i wanted to write about something the Lord revealed to me this evening, at the sing-in held by the church i attend.

While singing the Dutch version of the song Above All by Michael W. Smith, it really stood out to me that while hanging on the cross, the Lord thought of me. Above all things Christ Jesus could have thought about, like the loneliness He experienced, the humility of hanging there, the intense pain from the beatings He endured, the crown of thorns which was forced into His head and severely irritating the nerves in His head. He didn’t spent His last thoughts on the people that were doing this to Him, He didn’t searched the corners of His mind to find the most horrible curses to  express His hate against the ones that were murdering Him.

Jesus had lots of things to think about, lots of reasons to be bitter and spent His last thoughts on the situation He was in right there, hanging at the cross.

Jesus didn’t look at His circumstances.

He looked further.

He looked beyond the cross, beyond the pain, beyond the humiliation, beyond the loneliness.

He thought about you and He thought about me.

i have spent so many years trying to shrink myself. Trying to become smaller. Quieter. Less sensitive. Less opinionated. Less needy. Less me. And to be honest i still spend a lot of time and energy trying to shrink myself. So i felt quite uncomfortable with the idea of the Lord thinking about me. Let alone spending His very last thoughts before He died a horrible death, on me.

When someone is looking my way, i always automatically screen myself “am i doing nothing wrong?”, “am i not standing in their way?” and so on. And so i thought about Jesus thinking of me, while He was dying. What would He think? What would He see?

i used to sing this song by Michael W. Smith quite a lot and always assumed Jesus would be thinking about how much He loved us, me. And that He would look at us as being one of His people.

Today i realized (and i strongly feel it was the Lord revealing something to me) Jesus wasn’t looking at a photograph of me. He wasn’t holding a frame with a picture of my baptism, or me kneeling down at my confession of faith. Nor was He seeing a picture of me at a praise concert, lifting my arms up to glorify His name. He also wasn't seeing a picture of me folding my hands to pray.

Jesus didn’t think about us in fragmented ways. He sees us as we are. When He thinks about us, He fully knows who we are.

When the Lord is thinking about us with precious thoughts (see Psalms 139:17), He is thinking about ALL that we are. He sees us at our strongest, our happiest, our best, our kindest, our funniest, our highs, but also at our lows, our weakest, our saddest, our worst, our ugliest, our darkest, our most hateful and bitter-filled days. He sees us when we are having faith strong enough to move a mountain, but also when we sit in our deepest & darkest pit.

Jesus died on that cross so that we could be whole. So that we could come to Him, just as we are – the best and the worst of our being – we don’t have to pretend.

In His presence it is safe to confess your sins, to lay down your hurt, your fears, your shame, before Him. He will not say that He died for you because of who you try to be. No. He is not deceived by the person you may portray to be. 

He knows who you are, deep down in your core, and He still decided you were worth dying for. But He didn’t quit there. He thought you were worth dying AND LIVING for. And living is what He wants for you, too. Living in freedom. Surrounded by His healing presence.

Please don’t try and leave a bit of darkness, that may be inside you, out of His sight. He already knows and He is ready to shine His light upon your darkness, not to crush you with His anger, not to leave you to wrestle with the darkness on your own, but to amaze you with His everlasting & unconditional love.

Text from the song "Arms Wide Open" by Misty Edwards

Original picture from http://lifepalette.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/love-cross-upside-down1.jpg