Dear Lost,

Tonight, when the soft glow of the gray moon stretches the shadows over your day now passed, and you find yourself sifting through your memories with all the perfection that hindsight has to offer, what will you see? What will you find?

When you lay your weary head upon a pillow you wish were softer, and the first breath of your furnace creaks and groans your home awake, will you be studying your day? Your life? Will you think about your actions, your behaviors, your thoughts, and wish they were different? Stronger? Weaker? Will you hold in the callused hands of your mind, the broken and ragged pieces of events you wish would have lasted longer?

Or will you find the opposite? When the night grows long and the cool touch of your sheet threatens sleep, will you find things in your past you wish never happened? Will you find hurt? Sorrow? Anguish and fear? Has your life been everything but the smiles you faked as a child?

When rummaging through your life,

and finding things that you hate…

what will you do with them?

With bristles and brushes caked in the ups and downs of daily life, will you paint another fake face over the deep and sagging lines of abandonment and hurt that have carved themselves into your soul? Is there anything in this life capable of filling the voids such as those you have? Any pleasure so satisfying? Any love so unpolluted? Any friendship so durable? Where can you turn, oh weary one, to find something, anything, to heal the wounds of your past?

For you must. 

You cannot navigate life in this broken world alone. No matter how strong you may think yourself to be, there exists a hurt able to weaken you. A loss you will never be prepared to face. A pain, you will never be able to endure. An open wound that will never stop bleeding. Your strengths, as bold as they may be, are nothing compared to the depth of evil and sin that exists in this world…and that exists within you.

When those parts of your life that you hate…are there because of you, because of your actions, because of your inactions, and you yourself are the reason for your hurt, how can you then look to yourself for peace from it? Can you heal the hurt you have caused to yourself? Can you fix that which you yourself have broken, in the lives of others? Can your words stem the flow of blood, coursing through the cuts that you have opened? Can you think your way out of the hole your past-self has dug and placed you within? 

I pray that these words ring true. That you can see your sins, that they are ever before you, and the tar of their wickedness boils the vomit you fight to keep down. For it does not, and you think to yourself “I have no sin! I have nothing but the ramifications of other people's choices against me! I have failed, yes, I have done wrong, yes, I am not perfect…of course; but there is no evil within me. There is no wickedness. I do so many things right in this world and in my life, that they far outnumber the times I have done wrong. I, have, no, sin.”

Let these not be your words! Let even the thoughts such as these flee from your waking mind, and fear that they may show up in your sleeping mind. For thoughts such as these are nothing but self-righteousness. To assume that you can stand before a holy God…on your own merit…and your own good deeds, your own good words, is to deny what Scripture teaches. “For all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23) and those sins, birthed from our own volitional will, have earned us death. “The wages of sin, are death” (Rom. 6:23).

It is as such, because your sins, though they may have been directed at the people in your life, have reached your God. You have sinned against a holy God and the neon wrath reserved for you, churns within Him aching for the day it will be poured out upon you in full undiluted measure. 

All of your sins, were they done in public and applauded, or done in the dark and relished, have earned you nothing but punishment from heaven. The God to whom you will be held accountable has seen them all, and the stench of them lingers about his nostrils begging for them to birth forth the undying flames of your own condemnation. Thirsty for wrath you thumb the sky, believing as you will that your choices have no eternal consequences. Make no mistake, oh lost one, for there is, within your unmoving future, a date written and fixed in place, penned into your tomorrow before you ever existed. And on this date, fixed on a horizon you will soon see, your heart will beat its last. It will be a thunderous, resounding, life changing drum that sends echoes and waves through your entire body, announcing that your day has finally arrived.

Your day of death, your day of judgment. When your fluttering eyelids lose the fight against your waning heart, closing for the last time, they will open anew in a life another. When they do, you will be standing alone before the all powerful, all knowing, holy Monarch of the Universe, Jesus Christ. Naked before your King, an answer will be demanded of you. An answer for your sins, an answer for your wickedness, your sloth, your lust, your unholy anger and pride. What will you say to these things? Will you displace blame? Will you offer up the names of your parents, the names of your partners, failing to displace the blame you have so lovingly earned all the years of your life?Every action, every thought, be they private or public, will be laid before you as the evidence your Judge will consider when determining your final resting place. What will He see?

Will He see a life of “trying your best”? Will that be good enough to sate His holy anger? Will your frail human attempts at divine glory, quell the fires of hell, hungry for your soul? This is a question you must answer. You must. For when His gavel falls, and the very angels themselves cover their eyes for fear of what will soon transpire, you will descend, body and soul, into flames of eternal tomorrows, begging for a death that will never arrive.

--

But take heart. Take heart, because this does not have to be your end.

There is an escape.

A way out.

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For within the four dirt walls you will soon call home, there is a door. It is golden and glowing and the sounds of angelic choirs burst at its seem. It opens not by exertion, and no good deed, no matter how noble it may be, will gain you any leverage. Knock and pound, till knuckles bloody and bones are broken, and yet it will remain unmoved. Should the flames of hell which lick about your dangling legs compel your hands to this golden door, and the sounds of angels singing beyond the threshold which separates your salvation from your damnation, there is only one way by which it can be opened.

Repent of your sins and believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Admit your sins. By name. Lament and cry over the wounds you have caused in your own life and in the life of others. Shed tears of longed for forgiveness from the God you have sinned against. And when you do, if you do, the God to whom you will answer, will account the punishment that you deserve to the sacrifice of His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. He will do so, not because you have earned it, not because you deserve to be forgiven, but because Jesus Christ is God and lived a perfect and sinless life, completely fulfilling the righteous requirement of His Father’s holy law on behalf of all who will ever repent and believe in Him. 

Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Son of Man, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the Alpha and Omega Beginning and End, Lord of Heaven and Earth, whose crown can never be toppled and whose throne shall stand for a thousand never ending tomorrows, drank dry the white hot wrath of God that was reserved for you, when you repent and believe. Fully and completely will He satisfy His Fathers righteous anger towards you, so much so, that when His Father peers over the edges of heaven to look upon you, He will see not your sin, shame, and guilt, no. He will see nothing but the priceless blood of His only Son Jesus Christ. He sees this, my friend, my love, because when your sin is accounted to Christ, His righteousness is accounted to you.

The very righteousness of Christ,

uncreated and undying,

shall be given to you when you repent and believe.

Dear lost, dear wanderer, dear hungry and alone, naked and afraid, dear child of scorn and shame, you whose guilt can never be masked, I beg, I plead, I crawl on bloodied knees behind you, grasping at your defiant legs for you to turn and face your King. He is gentle and lowly and in heart, able to forgive the deepest and darkest sins. Able to wash clean the vile and renew the wicked. There is no stain so set, no evil so intimate, no sin so bleak that it can stand against the crimson current which flows from His pierced hands and side. Find unstoppable, untouchable, undamnable forgiveness in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

In Christ alone can you find rest for your weary and wind-tattered soul.