How Can It Be? // A Redemption Story

We’re here to help you learn and grow, so naturally, we share affiliate links for products that we use and love. When you click on one of these links, we will earn a small amount of money, at no additional cost to you, which we’ll use towards keeping the lights on here! You can read our full disclaimer here.

Four words.  Four small, seemingly insignificant words have been uttered from the mouths of seemingly insignificant people throughout the generations.  How can it be?

It doesn’t matter who you are, what race or language you speak.  It’s not the amount of money in your bank account or the title in which you hold.  Situations arise that send us into spiraling waves of emotion and disbelief of reality.  Sometimes our humanness is unbearably heavy.

How can it be?  I’ve felt the weight of this very question on my tongue.  A year ago, I sat across the desk as I was served up the news that a man, whom I thought I could trust, had deceived me and others in ways that I did not think fathomable.  Bile rose in my throat at the disgust I felt over the shame, the lies and the hurt that blatantly placed upon me.

Just days later, I felt the weight of this very same question on my tongue again.  But this time as I sat across the desk, I was served up a slice of grace the size that I could not conceive swallowing.  How can it be?

[Tweet “The greatest mystery of all history is that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”]

Jesus Christ, the Lord of Lords and King of Kings; part of the Holy Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) decided that even though His very own creation had turned its back on Him from the very beginning, He’d still give up his righteous place upon the throne in His Father’s Kingdom and enter this ugly, broken and sinful world.

And being that He is One with the Father, He could have easily entered as a man, triumphant and powerful, but instead He chose to enter this world in the same manner as the rest of us, humbly, as a helpless newborn baby.

How can it be?

Even His mother, the young girl who was hand-picked by God to bear Him into this world and raise Him, asked this question of the angel Gabriel when he came to her with the news.

Mary asked the angel, “But how can it be? I am a virgin.”  – Luke 1:34

Nicodemus, a religious leader, asked it of the Lord Himself, as he questioned how a man could be born again in John 3:9.

Charles Wesley wrote of it in 1738 in what would be come the hymn, And Can It Be.

And can it be that I should gain
An int’rest in the Savior’s blood?
Died He for me, who caused His pain?
For me, who Him to death pursued?
Amazing love! how can it be
That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?

And the song that has carried me through the last year of rebirth from what seemed a spiritual death, How Can It Be, by Lauren Daigle.

Though I fall, You can make me new
From this death I will rise with You
Oh the grace reaching out for me
How can it be, how can it be

I’m wrought with flaws and the frailty of this world. I’m bound up in shackles of sin and desires to satisfy my flesh. There is no denying reality, I’m a sinner.  I am in no way worthy of receiving the gift of Jesus’ love, let alone the dignity of receiving a new birth.  And yet, He gives it to me without question; a delightful gift to His beloved.  How can it be?

The greatest mystery of all history is that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, Romans 5:8.

I’ve been involved in “the church” in a number of ways throughout my career as a Christian, but it wasn’t until last year that I began to catch a glimpse of the full weight of the beautiful paradox of Christ’s coming, His life here on earth, His death, and ultimately what His resurrection means to and for me.

And that fact His grace is really sufficient for me.  How can it be?

I don’t have the answer to this simple, yet profoundly weighted question.  But I know who does, and I’ll hold onto the fact that someday I can walk by His side when He tells me all about it.

How has God worked in your life to make you ask, how can it be?

[divider] [row-start] [three-fourths]Bree Blum is a just your average single thirty-something book loving, oil using, cardigan wearing blogger who loves Jesus.

You can connect with her on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest.[/three-fourths] [one-fourth][/one-fourth] [row-end]