betrayal in is my blood

I've been doing a lot of what people like to call "soul searching" lately. And honestly, I don't know that I like what I've been finding. Though I am capable of good, I am perpetually committing sin. Though I am redeemed, I am also sinner. I've been wrestling with this a lot lately. That while I'm forgiven and clean, I am yet a human being under the weight of original sin. And while I can strive to do and be better, to crack down on my own depravity, I am unable to do so for long. I am not strong enough to save me from myself. Try as I might, at the end of the day, I need Jesus- I need God to do for me what I cannot- I need for Him to be someone I cannot be.

I didn't live in Jesus' time. I wasn't alive when He walked around with the disciples healing people. That was long before I ever came into existence. I never got to meet Him like a few did then. He died for me before I existed. He loved me before I existed. He forgave me before I existed. Crazy stuff.

And I've been thinking just about life in general. How life can seem so cruel if you break it down. For some it goes something like this: you're born into a family who you have no control over, you're raised believing you can be anything you want to be, you grow up and realize you can't be anything you want to be, you find a job that is less than enjoyable, you marry someone who cannot complete you, raise a family with more difficulty than you expected, and eventually die. There hardly seems like a point to any of that. I can't understand how things got this way- how God ordained our lives to be the meaningless things they are.

I can't understand why God chose to continue with us after the fall. Knowing how capable our hands are to perpetuate evil and ill-intent in the world, He finds a way to get us back. He finds a way to conquer the consequence of our depravity. Despite His existence in my life, I succumb to temptation and choose myself over Him. Despite the fallen nature of my soul, He has claimed it as His own.

I marvel.