“I’ve been told I’m just a body.”
“I struggle feeling like I’m too broken for God to actually use me.”
“I think God sees me as a piece of dirt.”
“I look so ugly unless I wear makeup.”
“I never want to be raped again.”
Heartbreak, over and over again. I am sitting across Starbucks tables, carpet floors, couches, cups of tea and coffee when I hear these words. My spirit is continually rent by the twisted lies coming out of the mouths of these women, young twenty-somethings who have been repressed and depressed and caged by various turmoils.
I am small. So. Terribly. Small. What on earth am I supposed to say, when the backstories come out and I haven’t lived through half of the nightmares of half of these voices? What do you offer souls that have been busted? How can I reverse a lifetime of degradation at the hands of an abusive father, the suffocation of an over-controlling, cold mother, the strangling of a violent ex-boyfriend?
I have nothing. I know Someone. That’s all.
I’ve been working through 1 John. He writes so simply about who we are and who God is, and how to tell if someone is actually a Christian. But something that arrested me today was his opening prologue:
“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us— that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ” (1:1-3, ESV).
A proclamation, that eternal life is real. A declaration, that fellowship can be had with God. Hope. Light. Truth.
Because Jesus is true and real, knowing him changes everything. Purpose is brought back to life because God came; God lived; God died for our sin; God rose again; God made a way FOR US to abide in him, the way we were meant to.
Ministering to women is not something I can do on my own. I don’t have anything to give. I only have truth to share, Someone for them to meet, a light that will never go out.
I can introduce them to their Creator, who affirmed their value not just by creating them, but by dying for them, too.
“In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10 ESV).
Light brings sight.
