A Later Savior

Like Reuben, I am sometimes too scared - too intimidated, too nervous, too proper - to stand up in the moment for what is right, especially if I seem to be on the wrong side of the prevailing winds, but I like to think I always have a plan for a later grace. 

Unfortunately, like Reuben, I often find that my later grace is too late. 

The moment has passed, the opportunity is gone, the damage is done. I'm simply too late. 

And why wouldn't I be? I am, in fact, nothing more than a limited being. 

And that's the thing, isn't it? I get all these grand plans for how I'm going to do good in the world, for how I'm going to set things right, for how I'm going to put things back together, but the truth is that all of my plans are lacking one very important thing: omniscience. I simply can't see what I can't see, and I often don't even know what it is that I'm missing until it's too late and my plan has already failed. 

There are moments in my life that I regret. Immensely. And the moments that I regret most in my life are not moments of huge, glaring personality flaws. They are not moments of evil. They are not moments in which I did unspeakably horrible things. Rather, the moments I regret most in my life are my Reuben moments - the moments when I knew the right thing to do and didn't do it. 

Because I was going to do it later, but it never happened that way. 

As I've reflected on this since reading Reuben's story anew this new year, I've realized that when I try to be a Reuben, what I'm really doing is trying to be a Jesus. I'm trying to be the savior of the situation. I'm trying to be the person who rescues someone else. I'm trying to be the one who sets all things right, puts them exactly the way they're supposed to be. I'm trying to be the hero. 

But that job is already taken. 

I'm very much a Reuben, but I'm nowhere near a Jesus, no matter how much I try to be. And it's not my job to be. Every time I try to put myself in a position for a secret grace, what I am really doing is failing to put the already-accomplished grace in its proper place. When I want to swoop in and save the day, I'm really taking someone's eyes off the Cross and what Jesus has already done. 

When I want to be the one to heal them, to set things right in their life, what I'm not doing is pointing them to the One who already has. 

Oh, I like to say that I am. I like to say that I'm doing it all in Jesus's name so that He gets the glory, but the truth is that something in me wants to be the one to reach down and pull you out of the pit so that I get the glory. So that you know that I'm the one who is coming to rescue you. Yes, down the line, there's Jesus, who motivates me plan these secret graces. 

But the truth is that if I was really doing as good of a job at representing Jesus as I want to be, then my graces wouldn't be secret. I wouldn't be a Reuben at all. I wouldn't be planning to come back later to rescue you; I'd be speaking up right here and now, asking the crowds what exactly their problem is and challenging them on their authority to throw the first stone. 

If I was really doing as good of a job at representing Jesus as I want to think that I am, I would look more like Jesus and less like Reuben. 

Sometimes, though, I'm just a Reuben. I confess that plainly. And when I confess that plainly, it convicts me. 

Lord, may I be more like Jesus.