Prayer Practice
Lectio – Read today’s passage
through once. Then spend some time praying and asking God to show you what you need
to pay attention to in the text. Read it again. Now ask God to help you see
what this text, and the part that has stood out, may mean for you. Don’t expect
to get a clear word every time but always be ready to really hear from God
through His Word.
DAILY READING
REFLECTION
Justified
by Mary McGinnis
Back in 2006, in the middle of the mortgage crisis when home values were plummeting, I had recently gotten divorced. I had a brand new, entry level job, but my house payments were consuming about 75% of my income with little left over for other necessities like food, utilities and car expenses. I cut my budget way back, but I was struggling every month to make ends meet. The weight of the financial burden felt overwhelming. So, in 2007, I decided to put my house on the market and try to sell.
Showing after showing, came and went. The feedback from the showings was often, “These things need fixed,” or just plain, “We didn’t like this or that.” I tireless worked to fix things up to make my home more appealing to the would-be buyers. It felt crushing and humiliating at the same time. The voice in my head would say, “How did I get myself into this situation? How am I ever going to get out from under this?”
As home prices kept falling, and the longer it took for me
to sell, the more equity in my home was being stripped away. I was forced to consider foreclosure.
Everything logically told me that I was “justified” in defaulting
on my mortgage debt. But I still had
this nagging feeling that it was not the “right” thing to do. No matter how hard and uncomfortable it was, if
was able to keep squeaking by, how could I justify going back on my promise to
pay back this debt? It kept me awake at night, tossing and
turning, feeling ashamed and hopeless.
We often try to justify things. But if we search our heart of hearts, don’t
we really know how far we are from perfection we are? Isn’t there always that nagging feeling that
we have not done enough, that we are not living up to who we were meant to
be? And we KNOW that we will NEVER be
able to fix it, no matter how hard we try.
Our version of “justify” often entails denying, hiding, or
covering things up. We make excuses as
to why we cannot live up.
The Biblical word “justify” means to treat, consider, reckon, to credit to someone’s account.
In my story, this kind of “justify” would have been illustrated if the bank would have declared my mortgage “paid in full,” even though I was unable to pay a single penny. And even more, it would have been treated as though this debt had never existed.
The limerick, “just as if I never sinned,” gets us
closer to understanding this concept of “justify.”
And all of this is credited to our account by “the grace in which we now stand.” We cannot boast about that fact that we deserved any of it. Far from it. We deserve to have the full weight of our sin debt declare us guilty.
Yet, we have been granted, “GRACE,” (G) God’s (R) Riches (A)
at (C) Christ’s (E) Expense.
When we cling to Jesus, God looks at us and sees the PERFECTION
of Jesus, and not the enormous debt of sin we have accumulated.
God has showed me His grace in many seasons of my life. During
my financial crisis in 2007-2009, I had given up hope. I had decided that if my house did not sell by
September 2009, I would turn my keys back into the bank and allow them to
foreclose. By the grace of God, my home
sold in late August of 2009. I was relieved
of this crushing debt.
We have been relieved of our crushing debt of sin because
Jesus paid it all.
What PEACE and JOY is ours when we embrace that because of
Jesus, we have been declared justified and stand in His Grace alone.
