And Jesus said...

"I shalt bloweth up sin and most totally obliterate it from all the Earth. For thou hast rockethed my face off for being the creation of my Father. Yea, thou shalt party on in Eternity and it shan't be shabby. For thine is the power and the glory and all that is most radical and excellent. Amen."

Or something like that.

Anyhoo, I was sitting at the drive thru at Rally's (or Checkers, for the uninitiated) conversing with the gal at the window. I see her about every other week on my frequent lunch treks to gather food. She hasn't worked the window long, but she already recognizes me as a regular and we chit-chat some. After a bit of this, she went back to help get the order together and I started thinking about how awesome it was to have that kind of rapport with her. How often do you get that at a fast food joint? I really treasured that. Then I got to thinking about her, wondering how she wound up working at Rally's as opposed to being a brilliant physicist or poet. Maybe she flubbed it somewhere? Maybe it was flubbed when she found it? Who knows. All I knew was that I really enjoyed knowing her as a friend and I really loved her as a sister for it. Regardless of what she'd done or what she hadn't done...it was just cool to see her friendly face at the drive thru.

That's when the plot thickened. In that moment, I not only realized how awesome I felt about her, but I thought about how much more Jesus loved her. Whether or not she chose to be at Rally's over Los Alamos, even if she had some unfortunate missteps...Jesus still died for her and wanted her to have eternal life regardless.

From there, the brew kept getting tastier. I started thinking about the neighbors that live behind Heather at the apartment who always chastise us through "anonymous", nasty notes about cleaning up our dogs' leavings. Of course Christ died to forgive them for doing that to us. He gave His own life for that. What are Heather and I sacrificing for it? Just a little bit of grief. But this is the typical instantaneous forgiveness that my mind kind of gravitates towards when it comes to turning the other cheek, forgiving, and loving your enemies.

What really hit home was when I continued down this road of forgiveness and thought about my own sins, missteps, and otherwise unwise decisions/actions. Last night, I told Heather I felt like a failure. I feel spiritually dead, financially dead, creatively dead, and professionally dead. I'd also been watching Eraserhead for the 45 minutes prior to that. Not exactly hard to draw conclusions from that. Anyway, at the drive thru today thinking about forgiveness for people's ugliness or just lack of getting it together...I realized that Christ died for my failure. In Him, I still have a chance to make good on my gifts, regardless of how much time or money or opportunity I've wasted. There's still hope for new life and new success there. Slowly, this is sinking in and exciting me. Hopefully, it won't be a feeling that fades away soon.

In closing, it's time to go rock God's face off by being His child and accepting His bottomless glass of sweet tea that Christians call salvation through Christ Jesus. My life could turn out to be awesome or it could turn out to be a steaming pile of you-know-what. But I'm loved, I'm saved, and that's all that matters.