She Is So Fat – A “Good Friday” Reminder

He spots her as he looks out of the driver’s seat.

Dressed in a pink-and-white floral top, black slacks and white sneakers, she is very fair, her hair tied up in a long pony-tail. This would have looked good to him, but for one “huge” problem – She is overwhelmingly fat. And she is jogging.
Nearly 120 kilograms, as her shoes hit the ground, her white earphones flutter about her. Each step sends tremors up her big, throbbing limbs to her torso and wobbly cheeks.

“Unsightly”.

“I don’t know who told her she could wear that tight outfit while she jogs, goodness.”

“Reminds me to never, ever be like that.”

But you already are.

fat, obese, jesus, arrogance, Good Friday, over-weight, be compassionate, the weight of my sins, Unsightly we all are
Your weight that can’t be hidden

This age makes much of well-built bodies. Our role-models are on our screens; well-toned, good-looking bodies, regularly worked-out.

Don’t get me wrong, fitness is a very good thing. It is godly. It keeps you healthy and hopefully alive long enough to enjoy life (unless “Final Destination” kills you using your fitness equipment). But how quick we are to think such thoughts about people who probably need to hear cheers more than mockery.

We make sure we judge when we are better than them, not when we are worse.

Well, you might counter, “she doesn’t hear my thoughts, so I am free to think and I am not hurting her, you know.” But Christ-followers forget one thing.

You forget you were much more unsightly before God than an obese person can ever be to you.
If fatness should even be a paralleled to sin (which it need NOT be), have you have forgotten how the SHEER WEIGHT of your sinful heart-attitudes terribly out-class obesity?

Here is a test –

Now, pick just 1 sin from this gorgeous list- Gal 5:19-21, NLT – any one that offends a holy God, and  ask yourself, “Would Jesus prefer me doing this sin just once over Him carrying 120 kgs of dead weight on His back?”

Now you can count the number of times you have done that sin and calculate- if you could- how unbearable you have made yourself before God.

The servant grew up before God—a scrawny seedling, a scrubby plant in a parched field. There was nothing attractive about him, nothing to cause us to take a second look. He was looked down on and passed over, a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand. One look at him and people turned away. We looked down on him, thought he was scum. But the fact is, it was our pains he carried— our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us. We thought he brought it on himself, that God was punishing him for his own failures. But it was our sins that did that to him, that ripped and tore and crushed him—our sins! He took the punishment, and that made us whole. Through his bruises we get healed. We’re all like sheep who’ve wandered off and gotten lost. We’ve all done our own thing, gone our own way. And God has piled all our sins, everything we’ve done wrong, on him, on him. Isaiah 53:5-6 MSG

Having tasted God’s expansive grace, your truck-load of heavy-weight sin was piled on Jesus’ poor spirit, are you now to judge someone who probably has never even wronged you personally? Jesus forgave folks like Judas who personally ensured his Master’s demise. Is not your new life to make you more like Jesus and less like Judas?

Because of Good Friday, your character looks like that of Jesus, before God on Judgement Day. So you are spared God’s mockery (Prov 3:34, NLT).

Next time, you could say a prayer for someone worse off than you. That way we could do what she is already doing- fighting her battles.

It is your sins that nailed Him there. Put not the obese woman on the spotlight, instead put the Man you crucified in front of your eyes.

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