My heels tapped loudly as I walked the long corridor. The air was heavy and people lined the walls on either side of me. As the rat-tat-tat rhythm of my heels reached the people I came up alongside, they would stare at me. They stared at my face, my outfit with the glaring white badge and my body language as if it would give secrets away about weighty matters. It was unnerving to walk heartbreak hall. I walked it over twenty times in four days and it never got easier. I just learned to keep my heels clicking and my head down.
Desperation and anxiety, hard living and broken dreams etched faces along that corridor. By returning their stares my soul was crushed with the hard circumstances, or rather, the sin that drew us all together in one location. Sin is an evil master and it doesn't let go until it imprisons the whole person, spiritually, mentally, emotionally and verbally. It was as if sin had snatched the voices of the people staring at me and only my inanimate heels tried to speak and the hollow echo reverberated somberly down heartbreak hall.
This wasn't how it was suppose to be. My heels' rat-tat-tat matched the rising rhythm in my heart. I was anguished by my choice in the garden. Oh, we chose so poorly. We chose a lifetime of heartbreak halls over relationship with our precious Maker. Sin twisted our fate and unleashed murder and hate, adultery and lust, theft and covetousness, lies and insanity, addiction and self-deception. How we are completely ruined by our very own decisions.
Someday, we will walk the final heartbreak hall and enter the courtroom. There won't be a single juror with heels that click on the floor. In fact, there will be no jury at all. It will be the hushed undoneness of standing before the Only Righteous Judge, knowing our guilt, knowing our shame, knowing our deserved death penalty. Our unrelenting accuser, the devil, will point his bony finger at us and smirk with delight. Our silence condemns us. Sin has stolen our words.
But I am one of those who looked to Jesus in the heartbreak hall of life, and my Friend Jesus steps before the Judge as my Defense. His words fill all the silence. His words shoo out the darkness. His words are so eloquent that tears silently course down my face. His words are Life. In my sin-shackled silence, I hear the voice of The Only Righteous Judge declare me, Not Guilty. How can that be?
Jesus, My Friend, My Only Defense, took my sentencing. He was condemned for my crimes. He was led away and nailed to a cross. His innocent blood poured out and covered my criminal heart. Jesus tenderly saw all the hard living and broken dreams etching the faces along the corridor, but most of all he saw me, the juror dressed up in "pretty" walking down the center, trying to keep the proper distance between the gawkers and myself, hurting with my own hard living.
When I repeatedly forget my need for God, Jesus knows my shaky heels and nice clothes are but insubstantial fig leaves. Thank goodness, I can not cover my deep heart needs from the sight of my loving Provider. How amazing that he pursues relationship with me. Jesus has patiently taught me that my every decision to choose sin over the Sinless One makes life harder. Jesus walked heartbreak hall in its entirety and selected me. Because he covered me in skin of his very self, I am a testimony that the guilty can be set free. Hallelujah!
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