Amazing Grace

Yesterday is a wrinkle on your forehead
Yesterday is a promise that you've broken
Don't close your eyes, don't close your eyes
This is your life and today is all you've got now
Yeah, and today is all you'll ever have
Don't close your eyes
Don't close your eyes
This is your life, are you who you want to be? - Switchfoot

Who am I?

I could answer this question in a number of ways. My name is Rachel Gardner. I am a second year university student studying International Relations. I am the organizer of blah blah blah. I am the daughter of so and so. I am the sister of so and so.

I could also answer this with the generic statement - I am a Christian. Kind of a blanket statement for my beliefs - God is my saviour (like actually-he saved me from myself), Jesus is my greatest love and redeemer. I believe that the Bible is God's love letter to me, that it's his story of how I'm a ruined person, but he came and loved me despite that.

All that sounds fantastic, and quite inspiring really. But I'm more than that. I am a person who makes some silly mistakes and quite often at that. I'm a big fat failure most of the time. And despite the fact that I claim to love God with all my heart, I seem to always fall short of getting my feet, my hands, my mouth, my thoughts to follow along with these claims. So I guess I'm a hypocrite too.

The song lyrics that I put up on this blog remind me constantly to question myself. -Am I who I want to be? God has some hefty standards for me to follow. The love ethic shown by Christ seems near impossible for me to follow, but I want to so badly. Why is it that I always feel as if I've fallen short? I'm reminded right now of Paul in Romans 7 where he... well, I'll just show you.

Romans 7:14We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

21So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22For in my inner being I delight in God's law; 23but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. 24What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?

Gah! Paul, I understand now exactly how you feel. There is this part of me that desires so badly to be everything for God and I'm constantly depressed because I fall so short of it. I guess I can find hope in Paul's next verse. "25Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!"

Without Christ, I would be nothing. Indeed, his Grace is completed undeserved, and I thank God with all my heart for having given everything for someone so unworthy such as myself. It's so amazing that despite the fact that Jesus knows me, knows my heart, my mind, my strength, that he still loves me.

"Amazing Grace! How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found. Was blind, but now I see."

-Thank-you Lord for saving a hypocrite like me!