Jesus: and trashy people

Have you ever noticed that nobody ever posts, “I cried myself to sleep last night” as their Facebook status? And if they did, some people’s first thought would be, “what a loser.”

But isn’t THAT real life sometimes?

We all do it. We meticulously pick and choose little slivers of our lives, then edit, filter and post. Anything to accentuate the neat and clean parts of our lives ; the only parts we are comfortable with letting others see. It’s no secret that we’ve become professionals at embellishing our lives when it comes to what we choose to present to the watching world.

Facebook and other forms of social media have made it easier than ever to give a very wide audience, tiny peeks into our perfectly constructed lives. We all love to post pictures and status updates about the amazing vacation we just went on, or the flowers our husband surprised us with, and how perfect and wonderful our children are. And as good and real as all of those good things can be at times, WHAT IF the dirty, sad, messy, complicated parts of our lives could be uncovered and found to be of just as much value.

I’ve often imagined how FREEing that would be to me, and so many others.

It’s human nature to care way too much what others think or believe about us. And there is a healthy balance to be found. But the “caring too much” is something that I’ve been asking God to begin to strip away from my life. Because the truth is, it’s exhausting. And in case you haven’t already found out for yourself, it just becomes more and more impossible to meet the expectations we set for our own lives when we let what we want others to think about us or what kind of perfect, neat life we want to convince the world we have.

Jesus is showing me that He didn’t come for the clean people; the ones who have it all together. Nor did He come for the well, He came for those who are sick.  He didn’t come for the perfect lives, with perfect marriages. NO, he came for the ones that were bleeding, broken and dying.

He came for US. You and I. The ones who don’t always have it all together, but desperately wish we did. The ones who’ve made huge messes of things, and realized nothing we could ever do could repair what’s been lost or broken.

Jesus came to free us.

From so many things.

From sin.

Shame.

Customs of our culture.

Bondage.

Religious ideologies.

From living for the approval of men.

And yes, even from the quest for perfection.

Sometimes life seems more like we are all desperately running, at break neck speed to create a perfect and neatly constructed life; presented to the watching world in a beautifully polished, gold picture frame. When Jesus stands patiently and kindly at the foot of the cross, ready and waiting for us to come dragging the mess of our imperfect, broken lives, and lay them down.

If your whole life feels about as trashed as me and my house look today; then this Jesus I speak of, came for you.

We are the ones His heart is after.

When Jesus heard this, he told them, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor–sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.”  ~Mark 2:17