Mtr Mary Trainor

Just as I am, though tossed about with many a conflict, many a doubt...

Dear friend,

I first heard Just As I Am at a Billy Graham crusade at the Los Angeles Coliseum, circa 1960. It is the quintessential “altar call” hymn, and I am moved by its music and words each time I hear them.

At the Coliseum, people by the hundreds--no, thousands--streamed from their stadium seats down to the field, then across it to where ministers received them, and where they could be “saved.”

As a teen-ager, I loved the music and was nearly moved myself to going down to the field--but never did. What I ultimately realized scared me more than the prospect of going to the field. It was that some people perennially went there. Went to be saved. Over and over. This played into fears from my childhood that one can be saved, then unsaved, then saved--in a nightmarish loop. It made me nervous, and kept me from church for decades.

But I still loved--and love--Just As I Am. Imagine my joy to discover it as Number 693 in The Hymnal 1982.

Fightings and fears, within, without…

One of the things I love about Jesus is how he finds worth in people others discard. He heals them unconditionally, without regard to whether they deserve it. So many distrusted him for this, feared him, worried about his authority--instead of simply soaking in the wonder of miracle in their midst.

We have witnessed this theme for awhile in Mark’s Gospel, where today Jesus is preaching in a synagogue. But the critics there “took offense at him.” Who is Jesus, they wondered, to be preaching, teaching, and healing. Isn’t he only a carpenter whose family is well known in this, his hometown? “And [Jesus] could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them.”

Just as I am, of thy great love
The breadth, length, depth, and height to prove…

Have you ever met a joy-killer? That’s the term I am used to hearing. Maybe you know them as something else, these people armed with needles to burst everyone else’s balloons. Full of advice, puffed up with certainty, determined to undermine the joy another finds in life. Joy-killers. Jesus was surrounded by them, people who put others into one box or another that ostensibly assigns them the only worth they have, or gives them only a little worth, or maybe no worth at all.
And they, what--hate? despise? fear?--Jesus for giving worth to the “worthless,” just as they are.

Salvation is complicated, a mystery. But this I know for certain: Jesus loves me, just as I am.

Here for a season, then above
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

Mtr Mary