PLAYING THE VICTIM

What are you a victim of? In this day and age it seems to me {Lindsey} that we are all a victim of something. These some things can range from petty to intense, life changing, never forgotten situations. Sometimes we wake up in the morning feeling sick, sometimes our marriages aren’t what we had hoped, sometimes we find ourselves in situations where being and feeling like a victim is completely justified. Maybe you have been physically or sexually abused, maybe you are a victim of rape, maybe your parents abandoned you.

Each of us is a victim. We are victims in a sinful world, we experience things that God never intended for us to experience. We are often justified in our anger. Our desire for justice is understandable, but we are a people who are not blameless in nature. We don’t hold the rights to seek justice, to throw stones.

They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, "All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!" John 8:7

Yet we pick up those burdensome stones that always seem to come hand in hand with victimization and we carry them around. We choose to be a victim of the things of this world, we choose to carry the burdens of those stones we are not capable of throwing. Here’s the good news. We don’t have to carry those stones any more. We don’t have to be a victim of earthly pain. We can choose to trade in our victim card. We can stop looking at ourselves as victims of circumstance and start seeing ourselves for what we really are, victim’s of God’s Grace.

A friend of mine, one you may all be familiar with, Darlene Schacht from Time-Warp Wife posted her thoughts just a few days ago. What she said is beautiful and complex to really wrap your mind around, but oh so true. “When I got to thinking about a painting, I realized that some shadows are light and some are so dark. Those are the heart-breaking ones. God sees the big picture. Only He knows the purpose.”

We live in a sinful world, we will experience horrible things in life due to the sin that surrounds us. But we, the victims of God’s Grace, get to live confidently knowing that He who has called us to His purpose will complete this good work in us (Romans 8:28 and 2 Timothy 1:9). We can live knowing that as those dark strokes are being painted in our lives that the artist can see the big picture that is coming. He can see how this particular time of suffering will allow us to be the person He needs for us to be. The person who can reach the victims of this world who still do not know the Grace of God. 

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