Perfection

"Crown Him the Lord of love, behold His hands and side,
Those wounds, yet visible above, in beauty glorified.
No angel in the sky can fully bear that sight,
But downward bends his burning eye at mysteries so bright." Matthew Bridges, Crown Him With Many Crowns

Our church had a wonderful music director when I was a child. As part of our participation in the choir, he required completion of a booklet that taught us about classic hymns. I remember my vain attempt to depict this one as a robed stick figure of God, sitting on a throne, and arrayed with a layer cake of crowns on his head. I was a very literal child.  I remember my frustration at that assignment, at my inability to produce something worthy of the subject. My drawing fell woefully short of perfection.

I complain loudly and often to God when life doesn't go as I think it should for me, when my expectations of perfection are not met. And yet, He who is holy and perfect allowed himself to be flawed by the ugliness of my sin. Those marks are eternal. They are the means by which, when I see Him face to face, I will recognize Him as my Redeemer.  He who is holy and perfect gladly bears those scars because of his love for me.  It is humbling to be so loved. I think sometimes I cannot fully bear that sight either.

It is too beautiful, too holy.  And I am too unworthy.

I have a new model of perfection. It is a perfect hand marked with a perfect scar that is both awful and wonderful at the same time.

"No angel in the sky can fully bear that sight,
But downward bends his burning eye at mysteries so bright."

"What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead." Philippians 3:8-11 (NIV)