1. Of what do you most long to be free?

2. What about yourself would you be rid of if you only could?

3. What steals your joy, zaps your energy, and drains your spirit?

4. What holds your life hostage – a painful or shameful thorn in your flesh?

5. What tempts you daily to despair that you will ever really be well?

What is *that thing*?

***

If you had to choose between freedom from *that thing* and Jesus, which would you choose?

If the broken part of you could be fully fixed today, but it cost you the presence of Jesus in you life, what would you do?

If the sickest part of you were able to be made instantly well – perfectly whole! – in exchange for friendship with Jesus, what would you pick?

If the most hidden and damaged part of yourself could be remade as good as new at the expense of having Jesus draw near…

What would you do?

***

1. One day soon we will be freed from the chains of worry, unworthiness, anxiety, and shame. Until then, we have Jesus…

…who for the joy set before him endured the dread and fear of the cross…who scorned it’s shame…and who sat down at the right hand of God.

2. In a little while we will be wholly alive in all our dead, dark, numb, and cold places. But until then, we have Jesus…

…who said, “I am the light of this weary world…whoever follows me will never walk alone in the dark, but will have the light of my life…”

3, In the blink of an eye our past will no longer haunt us, nor the future frighten us. Soon, all *our things* will be well. And yet in the middle – in the meanwhile – we have Jesus…

4. Jesus, who knows what it is like to suffer under the weight of *that thing* that you carry; whose body was familiar with thorns and wounds; whose heart knew grief and fear. Jesus. The only one who could finish and reverse the reign of dread.

5. On the cross, the life of Jesus was broken and desecrated – wasted and poured out by God – so that we might be made whole, and holy, and useful…

And now Christ lives, and so also do you. He has conquered, and so also will you. His Spirit is doing a new thing in this world, and it specifically – wonderfully – involves you!

Peace to you then, even as you suffer with *that thing* that you so deeply long to be healed. Because your wounds are joined to the wounds of Jesus, who God sent to unravel and dismantle the kingdom of dread.

He is near. He is not far. And He is making *all things* new.

Kim