Make me more like you....

We are going to this awesome church since moving back to L.A. They do communion every week, which is something new to me. They also have people walk up and get it and then you can sit and take it at your leisure. So every week I sit down and just try to quiet my heart before God. I try to let the Holy Spirit lead in regards to how I pray and what I focus on mentally. For a few weeks now, the resulting cry of my heart has been, "Make me more like you, Jesus..." I say "cry of my heart" for a reason. Life seems to come at you in bursts when you're raising two little ones under two. Life is a conglomeration of moments of ecstacy, moments of exhaustion, moments of frustration, moments of laughter. You kind of just deal with things (i.e. puke on the floor, puke on you, spilled cups of milk, poopy diapers, tantrums over guitars or water or anything really...) as they come, hoping to do it well and not permanently screw things up. In between all of these moments, these bursts of reality, you hope to be a good wife, an attentive and caring daughter, a friend who doesn't come off as a total flake...and more than anything, a disciple of Christ that honors Him. And when I take these moments in church when my kids are in Sunday School, and I have a moment to reflect, the only thing I can think of to say, the only thing that seems to really matter is "Make me more like you, Jesus..." How else can I be all the things I need to be, do all the things I know I need to? I have to be like Him, rest in Him, reflect Him...to my husband, to my boys, to my parents and siblings, etc....

Make me more like you, Jesus...

compassion

I recently watched an episode of Grey's Anatomy that really struck a cord with me. Meredith, the main character, who the show is named after, treats a death row inmate at the hospital (I'm assuming here that some people on the planet actually DON'T watch Grey's Anatomy, which may or may not be true. I am also assuming that these few people would actually read these random thoughts from a tired mom. A lot of assumption....). He ends up telling her it would be nice to see "a friendly face" when he is executed. So she goes to the execution. As she comes out of the prison, she is met by Derek, her boyfriend, who also treated the death row inmate. Derek, throughout the episodes, has had disdain and contempt for the man, refusing to let him cheat the system by dying in the hospital. Meredith has formed a kind of friendship with him. She comes out and sees Derek and bursts into tears and says, "I wanted to have compassion on him. That's why I went. And it was horrible. It was horrible." As I watched the scene unfold, I had tears streaming down my face.

This is an amazing picture of grace, of compassion, of what it means to reach out to someone unlovable, unlovely, unwanted, undeserving. Grace is radical and flies in the face of the way the world works. This man was condemned to die for horrible, horrendous things he had done. And Meredith, by going, extended grace in a way we could all learn from. God has given us this same radical grace. We are, in our sin, unlovable, unlovely, unwanted, undeserving. We are a mess. And God reached down and gave us grace, and mercy. It was painful and hard and ugly as Jesus died on the cross and took our sin. We are to be like him, to live like him. Extending grace to those around us can be painful and hard, just as it was for Meredith.

A side note: I have seen every episode ever made of Grey's Anatomy, or at least ever aired, and this is the first time I have seen any sort of picture of Jesus in it. And it may be the last. I don't plan on filling this blog with reflections about TV shows that fill primetime. But this time it warranted it.