Walking with Jesus

Tonight my heart is both heavy and rejoicing at the same time. You see, this morning a believer of Jesus Christ went to be with Him for eternity...and this is something to rejoice over! But this believer was a young mom only 30 years old who left behind 3 young daughters as well as her parents...and this is something to grieve over.

I don't know this young mom personally, only through a good friend who walked closely with her through her battle with cancer. But all day long I have felt connected with her because she is a young mom like me and she is a believer in Jesus Christ. The images of seeing her walk arm in arm with her Savior have been very poignant today, and I can't really explain why. Maybe because a piece of me longs for the day when I too will get to see my Savior face to face. I know it is real, and I know she is free from her sufferings of the past couple years. And while we here left behind try to make sense of her daughters' tragic loss, perhaps even now Jesus is revealing to her the beautiful masterpiece He is making of their lives; revealing to her tender mother's heart what we down here wrestle with...how could He allow this to happen? I have no earthly answers.

But what I do have right now is a keen sense of how short life is, and how incredibly much each of us needs Jesus as our Savior. And that's the whole reason for this post...if you are reading this post right now then Jesus is either reassuring you of His presence in your life, or He is calling you to Him...to call on Him as your Lord and Savior.

When I was thinking about this post, I kept seeing the image of Jesus on the cross speaking to the criminal also being crucified who asked Jesus to remember him when Jesus got to heaven. Jesus replied, "I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise."

See, the thing is, it doesn't matter what you have done-either bad or good. There is nothing you can do to earn the precious gift of God. You can never be good enough, you can never give enough, and you can never be nice enough. And at the same time there is nothing outside of rejecting this gift that can keep you from Him. This criminal hanging on the cross didn't have the opportunity to go prove His faith in Christ...he couldn't get baptized, he couldn't go give everything away, he couldn't help the poor, the hurting, the lost. He could only have faith that Jesus is the Son of God and the one to take away our sins.

That's it. It's simple. Trust Jesus today, and one day we will get to walk arm in arm with Jesus together in paradise! And Jesus will reveal to us the masterpieces of our lives...all the color, light and beauty we can't see with our earthly eyes.