Redeemed

I'm so far behind on posting, it almost seems pointless to try to continue on. Most of my readers have stopped reading, and I fear that all my "followers" have wondered on down the road without me. So I ask myself, and my audience of chirping crickets, should I continue to try to blog or should I just hit the big ol' delete button and call it quits? (This is not the first time I've struggled with this thought.)
Hmm. When I started this blog I didn't care if anyone read it or not, and I didn't understand the term "followers" as it related to my writing.  I started blogging just so I would have a place and a reason to write, and it was an assignment in a course I was taking at the time. Now I'm more informed and it is very easy to get bummed out because somehow, what I now know makes me see myself as a bit of a failure. I think I can relate to Adam and Eve after they gained knowledge of good and evil. They were completely happy, naked, hanging out in the garden, chatting with God... Then BOOM! All of a sudden, when they ate the fruit from the knowledge tree, things changed, and they were ashamed. (You can read the story for yourself here.) Sometimes what you know can hurt you. Yeah, you can call me Eve.

The good news is, the God they were hanging and chatting with is a redeeming God who, believe it or not, had never ending, more than enough, blow your mind mercy, and He dumped it all over them. And guess what? I hang out and chat with the same God, so I think I'll give Him my blog and let Him redeem it. (Sorry delete button, not now, not yet.) And I'll return to the reason I began: I want a place and reason to write.

Just for kicks, I looked up the word redeem. I already know what it means but sometimes I can get a fresh outlook on life just by studying words--what they mean and what they don't mean.

Mostly it means to buy something back that was lost, pay a ransom for something, regain possession of, or to liberate. I like that one. If my blog is liberated by God, then it doesn't have to be bound up by followers, web crawlers, search engines, reader stats, etc. I continued to search and found an antonym for redeem. What it DOES NOT mean: abandon.

Did you just get goosebumps? I did.

Let's savor that for a moment in the shade of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. When someone (or something) is redeemed, they (or it) cannot be abandoned. Eve messed up big time. She totally failed in obedience. What she did changed the relationship between man and God forever. In blog terms she had only one follower, Adam, and he participated in her sick and destructive meme--trying to be as smart as God--when he should have known better. Together they just about destroyed the whole human race. No more posting, no more readers, no more comments, just crickets--so to speak.

Shame had them hiding in the bushes when God found them. He never stopped checking in or stopping by to see what they were up to. He followed them even when they stopped following Him. That's what a redeemer does. He does not abandon. God pulled them from their hiding places, clothed them with fine furs, & made a way for them, and us, to get things right again. Jesus--the new meme.

So, I continue to try to write here from time to time and I guess I will continue to come up short of readers, followers, comments, hits--all those measuring sticks that make a blog a "success." But no matter how low my stat numbers fall or how big of a mess or a mistake I make, I know God won't abandon me because I have been redeemed. I will not be ashamed.

Afterthought:

When I sat down here to write a post, I had no intention on writing about redemption. I was going to try to tell you what I have been doing since the last time I posted anything. (Like you really want to know. Ha!) But that's what happens when God refuses to abandon us and regains possession of us and our stuff. He changes our thoughts and intentions and actions to bring attention and praise...and followers...to himself.

Do you have a redemption story? Please share it. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so!