The first time I clearly heard Your voice I was hurtling through a tunnel toward Manhattan in a steel tube full of the people You created. I sat smugly reading the bible––you know, the book everyone else should be reading and the only correct answer to the “If you were stranded on a desert island and could bring one thing…” question. I was trudging through the book of Numbers trying to pretend it didn’t read like a list of shampoo ingredients. If I could make it through this book I was sure to win my angel wings.
We arrived at Hoyt Schermerhorn shaking, rattling, and screeching like we were about to disassemble and jump a portal to another universe. I slammed into the side of the seat and my bible slid to the floor. During the retrieval process I looked up to see a pregnant woman smoking on the platform. “What is wrong with her?” I thought, deeply offended for her unborn child. “Doesn’t she know what that could do to her baby?” She ignored my death glare as she boarded the train surrounded by the lingering aura of her heathenism. In my seething state I began scrolling through the list of things I could say that would surely set her world spinning in the right direction once more. The great thing about being perfect is that you can hold others to the same standard, judge them for falling short, and then feel powerful and important.
“That woman is pregnant and standing. You should offer her your seat.”
The ground under me lurched forward. I staggered as the train pulled ahead and clumsily offered the woman my seat. WOW…or THAT. Instead of smugly judging a stranger, taking care of her. MIND BOGGLING. I was lounging in a deck chair on the S.S. Judgement sipping an iced tea from my lofty position––where did this thought even come from?!
“‘Now may the Lord’s strength be displayed, just as you have declared. The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion.’” (Numbers 14:17-18a)
The lights flickered and the walls of the subway blurred and smoothed out. I swear in one of the flashes of light I saw a bearded man giving me a half smile and a wave, wearing a “Nineveh or Bust” t-shirt. I heard a sound like rushing water and all at once I knew the overwhelming smell of fish was not because we were approaching the outdoor markets of Canal Street. I was in the belly of the whale––mercifully swallowed by my pride and course-corrected by the Creator of all beings.
You could have cut me down to size. You could have been righteously angry and turned your back on me, but you want a relationship with ALL your people. Even a judgemental one like me. Only You could use two small sentences to draw me toward You and take care of the woman I was judging. I looked around me at the floating carcasses that had been the ecosystem of perfection in my mind, turned to chaff. All I could do was pray and wait to be spit through the giant baleen sieve onto dry land.
Lord, You alone are perfect and therefore the only perfect judge. You even remind me in Your Word “For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the same measure you use, it will be measured to you.” (Matthew 7:2) I confess that my mind and heart are diseased and left to their own devices can be judgemental and drunk with power. Forgive me. Thank You for loving me enough to change me and going to such great lengths to save me. Being swallowed by a whale is preferable to aimlessly drifting away from You. Please continue to refine me, draw me close, and align my heart with Yours. Help me to care for and love ALL people, as You do. In Jesus’s name I pray. Amen.