It is Day 24 of my new year...a new year to be creative and a new year to learn more about my Saviour. Each year I begin my year with the intention of reading the whole Bible cover to cover. And each year from about age 14, I have got to about the beginning of February and then slowly life creeps in...little by little, day by day, my readings get more scattered, shorter and eventually my Bible sits on my desk and doesn't get read until I think to myself, "I feel empty...what am I missing out on again?!" And then my wonderful husband asks me...have you read your BIBLE lately? I am not very proud of writing that...especially as February looms and I can't yet boast that I am past my nemisis month! But so far so good...I have learnt in the past few days from reading some of the most seemingly droaning books of the Bible...aka end of Exodus and beginning of Leviticus that Jesus...the man I call Saviour...truely is completely RADICAL...INCREDIBLE...AWESOME...why? Because before He came down to us...the Law that God put in place so that His children could be redeemed was hard, difficult and demanding...because the wages of SIN are a lot greater than Christians today realise...you had to sacrifice another life (an animal) so that YOUR sins could be atoned; blood had to be shed so that your own life could continue to go on it's merry way. And it is not because God is a cruel God either! It is just because we don't seem to understand these days what sin actually is! Or how horrible and destructive it can be when we don't have God's grace and mercy. The Jesus that I love and am learning more about each day through reading through these Old Testament books is one who touched and healed a leper...a person who was an outcast; disgusting and unclean; someone who couldn't be in the presence of his/her family or friends; a deeply lonely person. Jesus was a man who let a bleeding woman, unclean for 12 years touch Him even though He is holy and pure...who hadn't been able to worship her God in the synagogue, or have a sexual relationship with a man, maybe she even had a husband who she couldnt be with, and no doubt she wouldn't have been able to have been blessed with children because of it...but Jesus allowed these barriers to be broken down. He makes us pure, holy, clean and new...so that when we want to come before our God in prayer, we can...because we are no longer blamed. Jesus takes it away. He is blamed instead. And even though God remains the same, perfect, Holy, wonderful, and Mighty, we now have the oppertunity to have a relationship with Him without anything that we have done or need to do..it is all because He made the ultimate sacrafice...His Son. We may or may not need to be healed physically every day, but spiritually, we always need Jesus to be our intercessor, to make our wrongs right before God. And He does. But what a wonderful thing to have the freedom to ask our God in prayer anything that we need. I know I should never take that easy task for granted, because we are truely blessed and honoured to have that freedom.
