savior: rejected.

As you probably know, I am home for the holidays! Back in my home town, where we don't have anything to do so we lay around in pajamas and play games and bake all day. I love coming home. Sometimes when I get here, my mom has cleaned my room spotless and folded back the bedspread, put a candy bar on my pillow and flowers on my bedside table. It makes me feel so welcome. Usually a few days before I come home, my younger sisters write me to tell me how excited they are, and when I get here, my dogs nearly knock me over trying to say hello. When I go to the store, I almost always see someone I know and they ask about my life and say its good to see me. My grandparents ask for me to come by, and my little cousins hug my neck when I visit. All of this makes me feel so loved, so incredibly welcome, when I come back to where I came from.

I try to imagine what its like for people who don't have a home to go back to, or who aren't welcome in their own houses. I can't, of course, even begin to know the feelings of hurt, disappointment, and heartache that must result from being rejected from the place we are always told we will be welcome. Today as I did my quiet time, I read in John 1 about the ultimate rejection, and it truly broke my heart.

John 1:11 says "He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him." Jesus, being one in the same with God, made the earth. Then He came here, to what he had created, to his own creation, and was not welcomed. Not only was he not welcomed, those that HE MADE crucified Him. Even though He knew before He got here the kind of welcoming He would receive, it had to have hurt Him. The people that he made and that He came to save rejected Him. It hurts me when someone lets me down, tremendously, because I have tender feelings and generally high expectations. I can't imagine if people that I made purposefully humiliated, beat, and killed me. The heartache must have been unbearable... and with no gain for Him! Can you imagine? Doing something on purpose that hurts tremendously, and only for the good of the very people who are making it hurt so badly. It is amazing, and sometimes I forget how big of a deal it is. We cannot forget the sacrifice He made, not only physically dying, but emotionally being rejected by His own people.

People in my life have hurt me, worse than I ever thought they could. I have been humiliated and emotionally wrecked to the point of actually changing who I am. But never was it for someone else. It is always for personal reasons that I endure heartache...I do not deserve a Savior who patiently tolerated so much pain only for other people. Furthermore, this pain did not stop with His death on Calvary. His heart is broken DAILY by me and every other human being, as we reject Him again and again by turning and trying to do things our own way. Yet He NEVER LEAVES. He never gives up, and never turns His back. No matter how many times we hurt Him, He keeps coming back for more. Now THAT is love.