Starts in the campus store, a place I rarely frequent...
*(Psssst...you can get most of the same stuff cheaper elsewhere. And when the difference could mean the equivalent of a tall starbucks latte, let me tell you, it starts to matter.)
For my father, however, this store presented endless wonder & mystery. He weaved his way through various Christian literature in eager pursuit. We surfaced somewhere in the Bible section. “Come on”, he said. “I’ll buy you one.”
Fast-forward to me perusing an expansive collection of Bibles. Study Bibles, reference Bibles, devotional Bibles. Audio, DVD, software. Thinline, wide margin, giant print. Don't even get me started on versions. The bulk of the selection was large and leather-bound. Ostentatious. I am no Bible snob, but at the moment it was almost too much to process. The pomp and prestige of them all...in their shiny boxes...lined in tidy rows. I couldn't figure out why it bothered me so much.
Irony has a way of smacking you in the face. It hit me then, how just a couple months earlier I had made one of the greatest compromises in my life. Now I was standing with my dad...in the Bible aisle...of my Christian university...wearing a knee length skirt. Surrounded by people who knew me as the red head (fake) or the Biblical counseling major (often faker). I could easily find my identity in any one of those things. I could dress up my truth. But I didn’t want to, especially when suddenly it all felt like a lie.
My eyes were filling up at this point, looking around at all the clean cut people and all the fancy Bibles. I felt entirely deficient. But just like Eden, it was there in that moment of my complete nakedness, confronted with all my inadequacy and all my failure, when the leaves of my self-righteousness had done nothing to cover the shame I felt inside, that God came looking for me. He found me crying in the Bible aisle. And that, dear reader, is when I saw it. The bible I had been looking for, the truth my thirsty soul craved. The gospel in paperback.
I met back up with dad at the checkout counter. He looked at me with concern because I was a.) crying and b.) clutching a paperback bible to my chest in a death grip. The other shoppers were either moved by my Oscar worthy performance or scared for their lives. A quick glance around suggested the latter. But I chose not to worry about that.
Instead I thought about Jesus. I started marveling at how God himself took on flesh. How Jesus, “though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself” (Phil. 2:6-8). Christ, heaven’s glory and treasure, puts on skin. The Son of Man, the only person on earth ever entitled to bragging rights, forfeits. In John 7:18 He warns “The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory.” Jesus empties Himself, reveals the Father, and invites me to do the same.
That day a huge perspective shift began taking place. It came through books like Elyse Fitzpatrick’s Comforts from the Cross and uplifting articles on the Resurgence. It came from various conversations with friends, was heavily influenced by the life of my uncle Jerry, but was first and foremost informed by Scripture and passages like 2 Corinthians 4. If you want to really see this passage come alive, Matt Chandler preaches through it like nobody’s business.
In verse 7 the apostle Paul writes “but we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.” Clay jars. Paperbacks. Susceptible to wear and tear. Vulnerable to afflictions, breakage, and damage. It makes sense then that “what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord" (v.5) The same way that Christ pointed to the Father, we point to Him. We brag on His power at work within us, a power greater than sin and its subsequent death.
And so I am struck again by the irony. That at a point of spiritual weakness, I find myself writing this. I’m tired, I’m beaten, and I’m worn. There’s a sin struggle wrestling against me this week, a lie lurking around every corner telling me that worth can be found outside of Christ, an air of pride threatening to leave me a flesh mess. I feel deficient, I feel disqualified, and I feel exempt. But as true (and truer still!) as these realities, is a Cross which proclaims the same good news that called to me that day not long ago from the pages of a paperback Bible.
I celebrate because I have been entrusted with the treasure that is Christ Jesus. Whose name I am unworthy to even type on this page. I meditate on the gospel at work in me, the Holy Spirit alive in me, the divine power that raised Jesus from the dead. I possess the same gospel that changed my uncle’s life and permeated his death. That caused his life-ending cancer battle to bend its knee in praise to our glorious God.
Quit browsing the shelves of self-righteousness.
Stop
shopping the aisles in shame.
Reach out and claim the gospel.
They say that you may be the only Bible some people ever
read...Make much of Jesus.
~Kirsten
