Everlasting Arms

“God did not send His Son into the world to condemn it, but to save it.” John 3:17

Many atheists have judged God and found Him wanting, and thus declare He does not exist. There is no God because there is so much suffering in the world. They do not look into their hearts and see that it is us who is wanting. 

Malcolm Muggeridge, a British journalist and Christian convert who wrote some of the most profound books of the 20th C, said, “The depravity of man is at once the most empirically verifiable reality but at the same time the most intellectually resisted fact.” He just echoed what God spoke through the prophet Jeremiah centuries ago, “The heart is more deceitful than anything else, and incurable–who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9)

Muggeridge wrote of his life changing experience in his book, “The Green Stick: A Chronicle of Wasted Years”. One day when he was a journalist on assignment in India, he decided to take a swim in the river. He noticed a woman upriver remove her clothes and submerge herself to bathe in the water. After deciding to forget his marriage vows, he furiously swam towards her with the intent of seducing her. When he reached about 2 or 3 feet away from her, and emerged from the water, he was horrified to find this creature grinning at him.  “She was old and hideous...and her skin was wrinkled and, worst of all, she was a leper....This creature grinned at me, showing a toothless mask.” He thought trembling with disgust, “What a dirty lecherous woman!” And then he realized with a shock- it was not the woman who was lecherous; it was his own heart! 

How merciful is our Father that He loves us so much that He sent His Son not to condemn us for this lecherous, treacherous, disobedient heart, but to save us for His everlasting arms!