The other morning I wrote and posted a poem that came to me on the moment titled “This Morning”, and I encourage you to go read it for it gave me a new appreciation of that saying of Isaiah who prophesied, “Behold the Lord’s hand is not shortened that it cannot save, nor his ear heavy that it cannot hear: but your iniquities have separated you from your God [Isaiah 59:1-2].”
The picture of Peter, sinking into the sea after stepping from the boat reinforced this for me. It is not that God cannot reach us, but we who cannot reach Him.
Jesus was still some distance from Peter as he began to sink, and that drowning man grasped helplessly at the air as he cried, “Lord, save me!”
Yet He, who walked so effortlessly on the water, reached him with one mighty, lunging step: grasped that feeble, unreaching hand, and lifted him up.
God’s short arms? No way.
However we are so often given the picture that the concrete of our sins prevented God from reaching us. As though God sits in heaven sucking bruised fingers from the urgent effort he put in. “Your iniquities have separated you from your God.”
They might well have prevented your own desperate, and feeble effort, but God’s right arm has gotten Him the victory. The force of his immeasurable power has smashed its way through reinforced sin: tearing the skin from the back of his hand, and is able to save to the utmost.
Knuckles bared, and bleeding: you may count the bones. That visage marred more than any man’s. Oh! The power of the cross!
See the wall quake, crack and crumble, and chips of sin fly ‘neath the force of Christ: God’s right arm and your salvation assured.
No matter the thing that stands between you and God. “Call to me,” says He, “And I will answer you and show you great and mighty things you’d never know.”
There’s no such thing as God’s short arms.
L. K. Stevenson
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I was captured by the analogy of our sins layering concrete between us and God. It accurately and thoughtfully captures the violent grace involved in salvation(Michael Card). Thank for giving me food for thought...and reminding me that God's arms stretch from the east to the west.
Carol
