As I turn 50 today, I feel led to post something I’ve been pondering for a while. I am a sinner. By birth and by choice, I am a sinner. Sometimes I sin because I am simply incapable of not sinning. I miss the mark that is set too high. I am selfish and prideful. I am not perfect. Sometimes,  though, my sin isn’t simply a failure to live up to the ideal. Both before I chose to follow Jesus and, to my intense shame, too many times since, I have chosen to deliberately break the laws of Man and of the Sovereign God Who created the universe and everything in it, including me. He has decreed (as is His right as creator) that the wages of sin is death. I deserve death. I deserve eternal separation from my Creator. I have earned eternity in hell. But God loves me despite my sins. His Word also says that the gift of God is eternal life through His Son, Jesus, the Messiah. He doesn’t want me to be separated from Him, so He devised a method of saving me from that. About 2000 years ago, He allowed His Son to stand in my place and take the punishment for my sin. The God who is outside of time was able to know every sin I would commit during my life from my birth 50 years ago in 1965 until today and from today until I die. And Jesus chose to trade His sinless and perfect life for my tainted and sinful one. It wasn’t nails that held Him to that cross. He could have called legions of angels to take Him down and slay everyone involved in His suffering, including me. He, Himself, could have done it with a word from His lips. Instead, as He suffered excruciating physical torture and a separation from His Father for the first time (how intense that previously unknown loneliness must have been for Him), he was thinking of me, loving me enough to remain there and take that punishment so I could be released from it, so I could spend eternity in heaven with Him. I am filled with awe and gratitude that He would care enough for a sinner like me to make me a saint by trading His righteousness for my filthy rags. I could never be good enough to earn heaven, but He has earned it for me. What was already His, He earned again for me, then paid my punishment for me. Amazing grace, indeed.

I pray that while reading this, you were able to say that it was all true for you as well (well, except the 50th birthday part, of course). If you can’t,  please let me know what part you can’t say and let me help you see its truth so you can spend eternity with me and Jesus in heaven. And if you can say it all, for my birthday gift, type something below (as simple as Amen!) to let me know we’ll be spending eternity together. That would truly be a marvelous gift to see a long list of friends and family coming to heaven with me.

Feel free to print, share or repost anything on this blog. I do ask that you let me know if you use one of my poems on your blog or at your church somehow. It might give me an idea of better ways to spread His words, which I am always looking to do. And of course, always keep the copyright symbol and my name with the poem so I continue to have the right to use them. You may not realize that if something is posted enough times without the copyright notice, I could lose the copyright and then someone else could conceivably file for a copyright and I would no longer be able to use my own poems! It has happened, so please make sure the (c) is always on the poem whenever you repost. Thanks!

God bless,
Denise McKenney

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