Recently I committed a sin that surprised me. I questioned my faith and felt so unworthy. “Am I really a Christian?” I asked myself. I’ve also met people who feel their lives have been so wrought with sin that “God couldn’t possibly save me, or want to”.
In this context I came across my daily reading, Luke 8, the parable of the Sower. I noticed the setting is Jesus with the 12 disciples: “and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s household manager, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their means. (vs 1-3)
Mary had seven demons. Joanna the wife of Herod’s household manager. These women knew sin and death and demonic possession. I stopped and realized the power of God to overcome the darkness and the sin in us, and in the world, displayed in the life journeys of these women. They are people who know sin and demonic possession who are now healed and associated with Jesus. Sojourners, followers with him on display, and who fueled his ministry with their financial support. God’s love won out.
I also came across this from John of the Cross. His expression of the journey to know the love of God that surpasses all understanding. The simultaneous power over sin, and gentleness to heal evidenced in God’s love expressed in Jesus and his mission allows us to overcome the darkness.
“A deeper enlightenment and wider experience than mine is necessary to explain the dark night through which a soul journeys toward that divine light of perfect union with God that is achieved, insofar as possible in this life, through love. The darknesses and trials, spiritual and temporal, that fortunate souls ordinarily undergo on their way to the high state of perfection are so numerous and profound that human science cannot understand them adequately. Nor does experience of them equip one to explain them. Only those who suffer them will know what this experience is like, but they won’t be able to describe it.”
God’s love. We may not be able to describe it, but we can experience and benefit from it.
Barnabas Man 