One of my ministries as a “bad Christian” is to make you feel better about yourself as a Christian. Today my sacrificial gift is to make you feel better about yourself as a human being.

I am going through a stretch of amazing stupidity. I am serious. I am talking Guinness Book of Records stupid. However, I have adopted the philosophy that if you will laugh about something a year from now you might as well start today. So here is my stupid week in review. In one calendar week I lost my drivers license. Twice. That is not a mistype. Recovered both times thanks to honest citizens. I went to retrieve a toy from the pool for canine friend Maggie. You guessed it. I slipped and fell head over heels into the water. I surfaced to the curious looks of my Labrador who had decided the pool was too cold for swimming. Oh yeah, I hurt my back in that seven day stretch and I wish I had a better story. Saving a widow crossing a street? Rescuing a puppy on the highway? Nope. A violent sneeze did me in.

It was not a good week on the self-image meter.

 

 

But in the midst of stupid week I realized that a simple truth is slowly changing my once paralyzing fear of looking or feeling stupid. I realized that Jesus loves me on my stupidest day. I thought of another cut from the new MercyMe album “Welcome to the New”. Here is the chorus for a song called “Wishful Thinking”.

Could it be that on my worst day

How you love me simply will not change

What if it’s really not about what I do but what You did

Oh what if

This ain’t wishful thinking it’s just how it is

That’s just how it is. Nothing changes in how Jesus loves me on my worst, stupidest day. And it is not the Southern “bless your heart” kind of love. It is love that sacrificed, pursued and was completed at the Cross.

How differently we would live if we really comprehended how much we are loved by God and that even in our failure Jesus loves us anyway.

God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. (1 John 4:9-10, NLT)

Brilliant thinker/theologian Karl Barth was once asked if he could summarize his volumes of works on life and faith. His reply was simple.

“Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”

So even in the midst of stupid week I could smile and remind myself that Jesus loves me even when I am not too crazy about myself. That ain’t wishful thinking it’s just how it is.