“… between us and you a great chasm has been fixed…”
Luke 16:26
Often, I don’t think we realize the vastness of the chasm between us and the Lord. The utter impossibility of our quest to cross it on our own. We likely won’t fully comprehend it during our mortal lives, but I pray God will impress on us enough to stir our thanks, break down our hardened and stubborn hearts, and compel those not yet rescued to recognize the importance and urgency of His salvation.
It is a chasm fixed in place by our rebellion. Our prideful insistence to do things our own way, to accomplish things in our own strength, to feel the importance of being like God.
And so we are separated. Not by a path we can walk down to reconnect if we just try hard enough, but by a gaping chasm that cannot be crossed. Because we wanted to steal the glory of the Most High who created us and all things.
But there is one – only one – who made a way across that chasm. To reconcile us with the God who will fill the empty, broken places within us created when we broke away from Him.
That one is Jesus. His is the only name by which we are saved, bridging the great chasm with His cross. His sacrifice took on the wrath we deserved for our rebellion against the God of heaven and earth. In justice, God could not turn a blind eye. But in great mercy and unsurpassed love He sent His Son to bear justice for us, giving His life that we could know only grace, forgiveness, relationship, wholeness, healing, hope, and life with Him abundant and eternal.
In Pleasant Places 