By Ajung Sojwal

Sometime in my early teens the Baptist church that I belonged to was swept up in a revival movement lasting months. Hour-long impassioned sermons of fire and brimstone for the unrepentant sinner blasted through the speakers and I found myself joining the multitude that answered the altar call to surrender my sin-soaked life to Jesus the Savior. In the presence of the elder praying for my soul I tried to dig into my memory all that remotely hinted of sin. I confessed about the time I sneaked into the movies while I needed to be in school, I confessed about the time I whacked my sister over a fight for something, I confessed about the lemon I plucked from our neighbor’s lemon tree without permission; the list was long and filled with everything any teenager testing the limits of her autonomy and wits would do.

As I sobbed for the wretchedness of my soul in need of the Savior, somehow I heard a wee voice within that dared to ask, “What kind of a God is this that keeps an eternal scoreboard of every mistake I make?” The Savior I met that afternoon in the revival tent nudged me to challenge the notion of a punitive god in the light of the Bible verse that says, “God is love.” It was the onset of my wrestling with God’s Word, my first conscious step on the journey with Jesus who continues to challenge me on the notion of a personal Savior. He has continued to elude my attempts to tame him enough to be on call to launder my sins; not that I don’t believe in Jesus as my Savior, but the question of “save me from what?” is still up for exploration. 

These days I find myself going back to the Lord’s Prayer wherein Jesus said, “Pray…save us from the time of trial, and deliver us from evil.” Every day brings its own time of trial when I need to be saved from selfishness, indifference, prejudice, hatred and whatever else that continue to fracture and poison our common life. Surely Jesus, God’s love incarnate amongst us, who came for the sake of God’s whole beloved creation has a more profound salvation plan than my petty vision of being counted amongst the saved in heaven. The vision of salvation this Eastertide from the book of Revelation isn’t for a select few nor is it one that unfolds in heaven, rather it is one that speaks of heaven coming down to settle on earth, where, “The home of God is among mortals. Where He will dwell with them as their God; and they will be his peoples.” (Rev. 21:3).

I can claim Jesus as my Savior only when I am able to understand and transform my personal story within the larger story of God’s reckless love for all of humanity and God’s unwavering commitment to make all things new — the new heaven and the new earth where “to the thirsty God will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life” (Rev. 21:6). I pray, Jesus, save me from a quest of a self-defined heaven, and keep me thirsty for God’s new creation. 

Ajung Sojwal is the Priest-in-Charge of All Saint’s Episcopal Church, Palo Alto, CA. Ajung and her husband moved to the Bay Area after serving for many years in churches in the New York, Connecticut and New Jersey area. Ajung is passionate about conversing and learning to engage in community as the incarnational Body of Christ in a suffering world.