Thoughts On: John 6:66-71

After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the Twelve, "Do you want to go away as well?" Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God." 

John 6:66-69, ESV

 I gave my testimony a few weeks ago in front of our students - how I became the good Christian girl, how the striving turned quickly into perfectionism and then into a dark and twisted depression, how it took a massive breakdown and someone telling me that God loved me, actually loved me, to turn it all around. It took learning about grace for what felt like the first time, and it took a total collapse of the life I thought I wanted. It was only the second time I had told my testimony, because I know it offends people. People become infuriated when I tell them that my religion, my striving and trying and hiding, almost killed me. In the midst of my breakdown, I had friends tell me that I could not be depressed, because that would ruin their image of me. I lost people, and I lost my identity - but I found something better.

The entire process was strange and dark and painful. Most people have come around to my story, now, and many saw it way before I did. Some are still confused. But it turns out the problem was always the lie of deep arrogance and pride. The lie that I can somehow be the Holy One. The blasphemy still haunts me.

Religion will say that, though - it will tell you that you can do it on your own. That you can be good enough, or strong enough, or sweet enough. It all sank in, though, that day in Paris - the day I forgot my map and ended up on the Champ Elysees, afraid and unsure of where to go. And then I spotted the tower - that beautiful, exquisite structure - over the rooftops of that busy, deafening street, and I nearly ran. I walked so fast I could feel my heartbeat. I walked past the circles of traffic and past the bridge with the golden statues, past the men selling crepes and past the signs for the Louvre and the Jardin Tuileries. I walked past all of it to make it to that tower, because in that moment I realized the reason I had come to Paris. It was never the art or the gardens or the boulangeries. It had always been the Eiffel Tower. And in the same instant, it sank in: It was Jesus. It was only ever about Jesus Christ and who he was and is and what he'd done. It was about his love and his goodness and his power, and it all seemed to fall into place:

Jesus Christ is the Holy One of God. 

Somehow it took me 22 years of Christianity to see it, that the Gospel was at the center of everything. It took me so long to look above the rooftops of my life and see Christ waiting with arms open wide. It took me that long to lose the map I thought I needed and stumble into his arms, tired and weary. But that's the beauty of it, you see - that I never had to find Jesus, because he found me.