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... of a revelation



I've been convicted recently of my need to better understand the Gospel.  Not just to understand it with my head, but more importantly with my heart.  So I returned to the basics.  I went to the verse we memorize in our childhood and don't really think about as adults because we feel that it's almost juvenile.  Oh, how far from the truth.

"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life."    John 3:16


My grandma bought me a My Little Pony for memorizing that verse when I was five.  So I've "understood" it for 24 years, and yet I can't say that I've ever really felt the weight of what it says about God until now.

I think one of the reasons God created the process of birth and the concept of children and family (whether biological or adopted) is so that we might better understand this verse and what it says about Him.  There are some feelings that only a parent understands.  When you become responsible for this little life that God created and you watch them grow every day and they look at you with such dependence, that's pretty much the closest we ever get to feeling true love.  All of a sudden, you can't imagine your life without this little person.  You don't want to go very long without seeing them and putting them in anyone else's care makes your heart ache a little the whole time you are away.

I now know that you feel that way about each child you are blessed with.  You really don't love one more than the other.  Your love multiplies, it doesn't divide.  However, there is something about the first child - when they are the only child - that is different.  As much as you might know that if you had another child you'd love them just as much and it wouldn't diminish the love for your first child, you still might have those thoughts.  A friend of mine asked me about that the other day when she met Selah for the first time.  She and her husband are thinking about having a second baby, but she said to me, "I just love my first one so much and I don't know how I feel about taking any of my love away from him."

*As a side note, I have to say that I love Abram even more now that we have Selah.  Now I love him not only as my sweet son, but as the brother of my sweet daughter, as well.  It's like how you love your husband even more when he becomes the father of your children.*

But that all consuming love we have for that first, only child is just a cracked, faded, and incomplete reflection of how God, the Father, feels about Jesus.  The oneness that I feel with Abram because he grew in and came from my body, is one one millionth of the oneness of God and His son.  The protective feeling I have for my children doesn't even compare to how much God loves and is able to protect His son.  If I take how I feel about Abram and multiply ts by infinity, I'm just starting to grasp how God, the Father, loves Jesus, His son.

And He gave that son over to murderers to be beaten and tortured and broken and trampled because He so loved the world.  Who is the world?  Me.  I am the world.  You are the world.  The homeless man on the corner is the world.  President Obama is the world.  The Muslim in the mosque in the heart of the Middle East is the world.  God loved us, all of us, so much that He gave Jesus to die so that we might be reconciled to Him who created us out of that love.

So I've been trying to imagine (as heart wrenching as it is) what it would be like to give Abram over to an angry mob, knowing that he would die, in order to save them from death.  The thought of my little man walking bravely toward a throng of violence and bloodshed knowing he was going to get crushed and killed is almost too much to handle.  The difference, though, is that I wouldn't love that mob and so I would never do something like that.  But God loved me and you so much that that's exactly what He did.  How heart wrenching it must have been for Him, I can't imagine.  When I attempt to imagine it, when I really try and understand, it makes the love He has for me so much more tangible.  It also convicts me when I realize that He has that love for everyone - even the hard to love people.  Everyone deserves to hear and know and begin to understand that their God loves them so much that He sent His only son to die that they might get to spend eternity with Him instead of apart from Him. But people die every day without ever knowing about that incredibly awesome love.

Really getting that and meditating on that this past week or so has been huge for me.  And I hope it is huge for you, too.  And then, I realize that Jesus - God - defeated, conquered, beat up, pulverized sin and death by coming back to life three days later, and my heart and mind feel like they could explode.

But that reflection is for another day...

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