God's love is so much bigger than our depravity

Lately I've been following the sad story of Mary Smith, the southern baptist minister's wife who disappeared from a Christian Women's conference in Louisiana. This tale began as one about a woman who simply vanished (apparently into thin-air) when she left her seat to visit the concessions stand and never returned. The police have ruled out her husband the minister as a suspect and are still looking for her. However, today it seems that this story has taken a rather spiritually tragic turn: She may have left of her own accord to deal with some of her own demons.

According to the FoxNews story:.

Detectives learned that Mary Smith was about to lose her job for failing a drug test...

And:

Halphen also said that the woman had told colleagues that she was divorced and was a bad role model for her children, aged 7 and 10.

If that hypothosis is true and shed did run away to deal with her own demons, it may not seem so bad to the secular world. It may sound like a woman who wants her life together before she can continue being a mom and a wife. To me however, it just sounds tragic. Why? Because God's love is so much bigger than all that stuff. His love is bigger than her drug test failure. His love is bigger than her view of herself as a bad roll model. His love washed all of that away a long time ago. The tragedy is that she hasn't seen or accepted that cleansing and felt that the only way out was to run from it all.

This whole thing just breaks my heart into so many pieces. As I've been working through so much of my own depravity and brokenness lately, God has continued to impress upon me that "I'm His boy." I'm His son, His warrior, His child. I'm His man. With Him, I'm literally whiter and more pure than snow. All too often when we sin and fall we feel like we have to start over again; or as a good friend of mine put it during our accountability group a few weeks ago:

It's like we're playing catch with God, throwing the baseball back and forth, counting each successful volley. We may even get as high as 300 catches. Inevitably though, we all occasionally drop the ball. When that happens, we all have a tendency to start counting all over again. The beauty of forgiveness and God's love is that He doesn't see it that way. After we say "1" following the first throw He replies, "No. That's 301."

Isn't that analogy awesome? When I first heard it I was just drilled with this incredible sense of freedom, humility and the truth of that statement. Mary Smith needs to hear it. She needs to know that no matter what, God never resets the catch-counter. Her depravity is covered over by grace and forgiveness is just waiting for her to come along and take it. She is God's princess and valued more highly than all the Gold in the world.

Mary, let our Lord take your burden. Let Him heal you. Come back to your family and let Him make you whole. Godspeed sister.