My Son Eric by Mary V. Borhek

Author:Mary V. Borhek
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: TVM 2016
Published: 2016-01-13T13:00:00+00:00

13

“My Wounded

Ones”

It began as an ordinary Sunday morning service at the Community of the Resurrection. A large number of the church’s young people had been feeling for some time that they were called into various kinds of mission service and had been talking to Paul Sundstrom and the elders about it. This particular Sunday morning Paul preached a sermon entitled “Going Out to Meet the Needs of Others.”

When he had finished there was a prophecy, whether through Paul or someone else I do not remember. The burden of the prophecy ran thus: “I am calling you to service from all spectrums of age and maturity. Do not compare yourself to others. Let my Spirit reveal to you the place I would have you go”

Following that, Paul asked us to turn in our hymnals to “Just as I Am.” I had sung this hymn hundreds of times, and I had never particularly liked it. That day the words suddenly came alive to me: “Just as I am, without one plea/But that thy blood was shed for me,/And that thou bid’st me come to thee …”1 And I saw, as I had never seen before, that the hymn was talking about me. Before, it had always been referring to sinners—other people—but not to me because mostly I was a “good” girl.

Tears ran down my cheeks as we came to the words “Just as I am, and waiting not/To rid my soul of one dark blot.” There were so many dark blots, so much hardened lava of ancient anger and rage and hatred within me.

“Just as I am, thou wilt receive,/Wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve.” 1 knew what the hymn was talking about. Firsthand, I knew.

“Just as I am, thy love unknown/Has broken every barrier down.” When I had faced my inner ugliness, I had felt that love as I had never felt it before, real and actual. In spite of that ugliness I knew he loved me.

There remained only the need for my response. It was not a new response, for I had given it years before, but it came now with a new intensity. “Now, to be thine, yea, thine alone,/ O Lamb of God, I come—I come!” I felt like a broken child running home to her father—“Daddy, I’m coming, I’m coming!”—and flinging herself into those outstretched arms.

And as we sang and tears ran down my cheeks and I realized that Jesus had reached out to me not because I was already good but because I needed him so desperately, the Lord suddenly dropped a message into my mind: “That’s how homosexuals are to come to me.”

No difference between the homosexual and me. Straight or gay, we were both sinners. Was homosexuality a greater sin than anger? Or, I suddenly realized, than spiritual pride? On a scale of one to twenty, where would the various sins fall? Perhaps there was no scale, because all had sinned; there was only One without sin.

As we finished singing “Just as I Am” it

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