Fall (Wounded Animal)/Love Rejected

Imagine being a parent of a young infant, specifically an infant who is sick or injured. Imagine your love for this child, and your willingness to do anything that would make him healthy again. Imagine this child is unable to understand anything you are doing: His only point of references is his own suffering. Imagine getting him to the hospital. Imagine him feeling every treatment like a torture, unable to comprehend that every action taken is one meant to restore him to health. Imagine your own pain, seeing this child that you love in pain. Imagine how that pain is compounded by the fact this child thinks that you, right now, are seeking to harm him further.
 
This, more or less, is how it is with our relationship with God. We are that wounded child, injured through our own fault, and we carry the weight of our failures on our backs. God comes to restore us to friendship with Himself, a friendship we no longer deserve, but which He eagerly wishes us to experience. But we see that relationship as a burden instead of a blessing, a limitation rather than a liberation. As with that wounded child, we mistake God’s attempt to heal us as an attack, but we don’t just do so because of the pains of the treatment. We so identify with our own wounds that we resist even the idea of being healed. We mistake our selfishness and pride and all our other vices for who we really are. Perhaps the most insidious lie of the Devil, after “God doesn’t know or want what’s best for you,” is “This behavior or vice that keeps you away from God is what defines you as you; you need it to be true to yourself.” But we are not our vices and failings and sins. In order to convince us of this, God needed to take a drastic step.
 
Challenge: Look deep in yourself to consider things you do which know to be wrong. Could you imagine being the sort of person who didn’t do them? Do you want to be that person?