A Ragamuffin, if Ever There Was One

29. May 2009 by Annette Colon-Alvarenga.

I received an unexpected email this week. My most recent posts have not been very popular with at least one of my readers. This person really ripped into me telling me all that was wrong with me and the reason for my recent “attitude” (it’s a good thing the email was from a friend).  Perhaps I was too honest.  I’ll tell you, I’ve come a long way from being a repressed person who never expresses anything to, well, perhaps expressing more than I should. I respected her point of view and did not attempt to justify myself before her. After all, she is partially right.

I do wear a titled halo. I am a sinner, inept, poor, week, needy, powerless, helpless, an inconsistent and unsteady disciple. I have been bent, bruised, beat-up and burnt out. I say things I shouldn’t say and don’t say the things I should.  And like the Apostle Paul said, I do the things I shouldn’t do and don’t do the things I should. I am a ragamuffin if ever there was one. And I am one of the “poor in spirit” that Jesus talked about in the Sermon on the Mount.

I enjoy reading Charles Finney sermons as old as they are (written in the 1800’s). In his sermon titled, “Blessed are the Poor in Spirit” taken from Matthew 5:3, Finney provides a list of what it is to be “poor in spirit.” The following is only 1 of 7 descriptions:

“Being poor in spirit implies that we see in its true light the tendency in us to every thing evil–that we understand that the habitudes of our minds, that our appetites and propensities, that nearly the whole power of the sensibility continually tends to selfishness. . .”

I am not writing this to justify anything that I have previously posted that may have been offensive.  I do understand my “tendency” as Finney describes it. I understand that I am at times impulsive and write out of my frustrations. But I thank God that it was for the “imperfects” such as myself that Jesus came. I live by grace and grace tells me that even if I am not who I think I should be or others think I should be, I am accepted just as I am. “But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more.” (Romans 5:20)

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, the Russian author and philosopher, wrote in his most famous novel Crime and Punishment:

At the last Judgment Christ will say to us, “Come you also! Come, drunkards! Come, weaklings! Come, children of shame!” And he will say to us: “Vile beings, you who are in the image of the beast and bear his mark, but come all the same, you as well.” And the wise and prudent will say, “Lord, why do you welcome them?” And he will say: “If I welcome them, you wise men, if I welcome them, you prudent men, it is because not one of them has been judged worthy.” And he will stretch out his arms, and we will fall at his feet, and we will cry out sobbing, and then we will understand all, we will understand the Gospel of grace! Lord, your Kingdom come!

I clearly don’t fall into the category of the “wise and prudent” at this stage in my walk . My writings lately would attest to that (and I have been judged “unworthy” lately as a result). But praise God for the Gospel of grace!

I have removed my blog post from last week from this site in order to avoid any further “offense.”  I will continue to be transparent and honest in my future writings expressing unapologetically what the Word speaks to me, absent the frustration I sometimes encounter.  But when I have written something that perhaps does not jive with the title of this blog, “Seeking the Truth in the Word,” do remember that I am simply a ragamuffin living by the grace of Jesus Christ. All comments are always welcome.

P.s. If you do not wish to receive these posts, please simply email me and I will remove you from the blog-mail list. No hard feelings.  Really.

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