The summer before my senior year of college I worked as an apprentice butcher. If you know me you’re laughing right now: Bill a butcher!
But if you were in the meat market with me for those three months when I was 21 years old you wouldn’t have laughed – you would’ve cried for me. It was one of the most painful times in my life.
The butchers butchered me. Every mistake I made (there’s a lot more to cutting meat then I realized!) was harshly criticized. And they harassed me at every chance they could because they resented that an executive in the company had put me in their shop, not so that I could learn their trade and become a butcher, but as a favor to help me to make money for college. They ganged up on me and persecuted me for being a Christian. They talked dirty to make me uncomfortable. They cussed at me. They laughed at me.
I Cried on the Inside
I held back tears. I tried to be strong. I worked my hardest to do everything right and to be a good Christian witness.
But the butchers got the best of me. I became more and more depressed. By the end of the summer I was exhausted, broken, and believed I was a failure. I left feeling like a dog licking my wounds.
A Word from a Monk
Then I went from the butcher shop into a monastery! I didn’t want to go, but at the start of the summer I had committed to spend three days there to pray about my future in Christian psychology.
Frankly, I didn’t want anything to do with God at that point! I felt like he had disappointed me. Every day in the meat market I prayed for God’s help and it seemed that all I got back was the message that he wanted me to endure this persecution like the early Christians that Peter wrote to in 1 Peter.
My experience at the monastery wasn’t much better than the meat market. Nobody abused me, but it was a desert wilderness for me. I had never fasted for three days, nor had I ever been silent and alone with God for three days. I had taken on too much. And I wasn’t able to connect with the priest who gave me spiritual direction. The book he gave me to read made no sense to me at all. The only thing I got out of it was that the word “grace” was in the title!
Where’s the Grace?
So I decided that God wanted to teach me about his grace. But that just confused me – if God wanted me to experience his grace then why did he send me to a meat market to be mistreated and then to a monastery to be abandoned?
After my three days were finished I left the monastery hungry, exhausted, alone, and dejected. I hadn’t heard God’s voice for my future. I didn’t even like God at that point!
The Vision I’ll Never Forget
But the next day was one of the turning points in my life. I was in church singing, “How lovely on the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news. Good news. Announcing peace, proclaiming news of happiness. Our God reigns! Our God reigns!”
Suddenly, God gave me a gift of grace. In my mind’s eye I saw myself at the bottom of Mount Sinai, where Moses received the Ten Commandments. I wanted to climb to the top to meet with God, but I felt unworthy and unable. I felt the sense of shame and isolation that I felt in the meat market and in the monastery. But I was telling myself that I had to get up. I had to work at it. I had to try harder and do better.
Then my anxious, self-critical, and self-demanding thoughts were interrupted. I saw Jesus coming down the mountain! He was looking at me with eyes of compassion. He stopped when he came to me and he picked me up and put me over his shoulders. He started to carry me up the mountain.
A crowd formed. People started to insult Jesus. They spit at him, yelled at him, and beat him. And still he carried me up the mountain. I realized that Jesus Christ, the Holy One, the Son of God, was taking onto himself the persecution and pain that I had experienced. And he was paying the price for my failures and sins too.
As I hung over his shoulder all I could see were his feet: “How lovely on the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news!”
I realized that I was the cross on Jesus’ back. He carried me all the way to the top of the mountain, into the presence of God.
Grace. I experienced the grace of God in Christ. So that’s what the monk was trying to tell me!
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William Gaultiere, Ph.D. is a Psychologist specializing in “Christian Soul Care” since 1986. Bill and his wife Kristi (a Marriage and Family Therapist) have a donor-supported ministry to pastors and leaders called Soul Shepherding. In counseling, spiritual mentoring, seminars, and retreats Bill and Kristi help people to connect deeply with Christ in ways that facilitate soul transformation. At Bill and Kristi’s webstie, SoulShepherding.org, you will find articles, prayers, and pictures to nourish your soul in God.
William Gaultiere, Ph.D. ~ Soul Shepherding, 4000 Barranca Pkwy, Suite 250, Irvine, CA 92604 ~ http://www.soulshepherding.org/ ~ 949.262.3699 ~ http://mailto:Bill@SoulShepherding.org