"It is finished."

I have missed this community, but I have been encouraged by the posts. (I've kept up with them even though I haven't posted in a little while.) I'm still working through this past week's chapter of DOTE, but I really really enjoyed last week's chapter on judgment. Mmm, "enjoyed" isn't quite the word I want, but you know what I mean. I've at least continued to process it. I had to sit and journal out all of Darrell's points because I got lost in points 1-6 and subpoints A-G and sub-sub-points i-x... but once I did, it made incredible sense.

So, a couple of take-aways:

1.) God is never the kid with the magnifying glass out to fry army men on a hot summer day in Fresno (that was my brother... okay, and me, too.). His judgment is always aimed at the beast, not at people... but when people deliberately choose to take the mark of the beast upon themselves and adopt his character and attitude of hostility toward God, they will naturally get caught in the cross-fire. It's not pretty, but it's logical. It makes uncomfortable sense.

2.) If God were not wrathful, he would not be worth following. Because a God who isn't wrathful is a god who isn't "strongly settled in opposition to all that is evil." And that's a god who isn't holy or pure or perfect or any of the other things I know my God is.

3.) Judgment only comes after mercy has been lavished again and again and again. DJ says, "God is merciful because he offers a way out of the judgment... There is no refuge from the judging God; but there is refuge in the judging God" How does that work?!

And then the bazinga of the chapter was this: "The voice from the throne that cries, 'It is done' is the same voice that cries from the cross, 'It is finished' "

You guys, I almost wept as I sat and processed that statement. It's alpha and omega trinitarian bliss mixed with the beauty of redemption, mixed with the intensity of seeing the most complete expression of God's love and mercy and wrath and judgment all at the same time (my theology prof used to say, "the cross is the fullest expression of God's wrath and simultaneously the fullest expression of God's love"), mixed with so much more than words can articulate...

it's too much for me to wrap my brain around, but my heart knows that it's right and it's true and it's exactly what I need.