If not fire insurance, then why?

Here's the thing about following Jesus. It's hard. It's not about being nice. It's not even about being good. People are often very nice, and very good, without loving or caring about Jesus at all. Following Jesus was never meant to teach us to be nice. It's meant to teach us to die.

And who in their right mind wants that?

But here's why I try to follow anyway: (It's a bit of a story, but bear with me....)
Over 30 years ago, Marty and I were living in a farmhouse outside a very small town in southern Indiana. We didn't have garbage pickup; we had to run our garbage down the country road to a rather secluded clearing that had a bunch of industrial-sized dumpsters in it. One day in December, when I took a load of garbage out there at noon, I got grabbed from behind.

I'm not sure why I survived the rape. The guy had me pinned to the ground and was choking me, and I was really, really sure I was going to die. But all of a sudden, the guy took his hands from my throat, told me, "Don't move," got up, got in his car and drove away.

I didn't move. I couldn't, at first--because it took a while for me to realize that I was going to live after all. In the time between my being able to breathe again, and my being able to move again, I had one of those rare, incredibly intense God-moments. It felt almost like a vision that I was just short of actually seeing.

What I felt/knew was this: God was with me. And the God with me was God on the cross--Christ. Christ was weeping--as profusely and desperately as I was. The sky was clear, but in my memory I feel what seemed like rain on my face.

And Christ was female.

That last bit really threw me. I'd never heard of anything like that, and I thought it was so weird I didn't tell anyone about it for four years.

But even though I didn't understand the whole female-Christ thing immediately, I realized one truth right away: God understood what I had been through. I wasn't going to have to try to explain to an omnipotent, omniscient, undying, never-suffering, almighty male God what it feels like to be a woman who has been raped. Because somehow, when Jesus died on that cross, that omnipotent God found out exactly how it feels. On the cross, God died every single death that every single one of us dies. Physical, emotional, spiritual, whether brought upon us by our own sin or by others--God enters every place we die. God understands why we feel the rage we do. God even knows what it feels like to be in that place where you're screaming, "God, how the hell could you go and abandon me like this??"

God died/dies everyplace we do, because God doesn't want us to be alone. Ever. God loves us that much.

It's ridiculous. No wonder Jesus sweat blood at the mere thought.

But here's the thing. As soon as I experienced this, I knew I would be ok. I knew I would somehow heal from this experience--and not in terms of that God-awful "scarred-for-life" crap we survivors hear way too often. I knew that someday (down the road, yeah, but someday) I would be whole. Since Jesus was with me in my dying, I would be with him in his living. Full, complete, abundant living.

To me, this is what the cross is really about--God loving us so much that God is willing to be with us in our dying, because if God is with us we will live. So God is willing to go even where it hurts like hell (a phrase I use because that's exactly what I mean), so that we will know there is no darkness we can enter where the God of life cannot be found.

That is some serious love. It's so deep, and so powerful, that it changes things. It turns darkness to light, and death to life. I know for a fact that this is true.

I want the courage to love like that. I want the courage to be able to walk with other people who are hurting, and scared, and dying, and not run from them. I want the courage to stay with them, even when I can't fix their pain or take it away, so they will know that they're not alone, and they're loved, and they matter so much that someone is willing to feel their pain, and their dying. (There are limits to this, of course. I'm not talking about absorbing or accepting the pain of being abused, for example, because that doesn't heal the abuser or the victim.)

I believe that when we find the strength to face suffering and death, when we choose to stay present with people, they experience the love of Christ, and they begin to understand what resurrection really means. Which is, instead of taking all that pain and death and using it to inflict more pain on someone else, they will find themselves healed and restored and en-couraged enough to return love instead of rage back into the world.

We don't have to do this. Just like Jesus didn't have to die for us. And it's not easy to love like this; it takes courage. I find that courage in Jesus. And that's why I try to follow him.