I have been up since 4 this morning... After a 9 hour drive down to Florida, my baby's sleep schedule was thrown off a bit... up at 4 am and chatting away :) I woke up with the deepest ache this morning remembering what today is... Good Friday. The day that Jesus walked Himself to His fate, carrying the very wood that the people would tie him up on, nail Him to, and watch Him die. My heart burst with pain today in a way it never has. I am now a mother, to a boy I adore more than I thought possible. When David was born, he was in the hospital for 10 days. He developed a little infection. Looking back it was probably something very minor, but it was the hardest, most emotional 10 days of my life. Every day the doctor would come in not knowing what was causing my baby to struggle breathing. As a mother you want to do everything you can to protect your children, and when you have those moments that you realize their lives are actually not in your control, you get scared. I, of course, had the thought run through my mind, "What if I lose this baby?" I am so grateful to say that God blessed us tremendously, and we have a healthy baby boy now, but those 10 days were the longest days of my life. Now that I am a mommy, I look at the world and see the world differently. I thought of Mary this morning. How she had no control of the pain that her son was about to endure, that she could not protect her child from it; but even more, she had to submit to her son's fate and trust that this was God's will for her son. The faith she must have had. It's humbling for me to think about.
Now, what I was pondering this morning and have struggled with for a long time is the big WHY? Why, exactly, did Jesus have to die on a cross? Why did it have to be such an intense, dramatic, and painful scene that had to occur? I have heard that Jesus died on a cross to save us from our sins, but the big question is still WHY? I understand there is punishment for our sins, but why something this extreme? Why did He go about saving us from our sins in this way?
While I have my days where I think I have power and control over my life, I 100% believe that our lives are not our own. We come from God and one day will hopefully return to Him. God created us in His likeness and image, and that means the way that God functions and thinks, we too will function and think because He made us this way. He created us to live our lives a specific way. While we try to make up our own rules, it does not work. Take for example if you try to ride a bicycle backwards, you will quickly discover that the bicycle will not function the way it is supposed to. After several attempts of trying to cycle it backwards, the pedals will break off or the whole bicycle itself will break. In the same way, if we try to live our lives in a way our Creator did not intend for us to, we will not function right. After time, we will break entirely.
Because we are a fallen people, we all fail at one time or another to listen to God; we all sin. We want to control our own lives, make up our own rules, and convince ourselves that we know what is best for us. Because of this, we separate ourselves from God. When we do not seek His love, His guidance, His breath of life within us, we do not function the way we are meant to. With each day that we do this, a part of us dies. If we do this long enough without trying to return to Him and seek His help, we eventually numb ourselves to God entirely and choose an eternity without Him.
This is what the cross represents. It represents a life without God. Life is God, Death is Sin. The cross, in a very real way, shows what happens when we sin and take God out of the equation of our lives. We cease to have any life within us at all.
So... why did Jesus die on a cross? Well, He did that so we would not have to. Had Jesus not come and died on a cross and taken our sins on Himself, each one of us would've had to suffer the consequences of sin and living life without God, and that is eternal death. Instead of us having to suffer these consequences eternally, Jesus decided to, in one moment of history, take on the sins of the whole world and save us from this fate.
But I still ask why? Why did Jesus have to die on a cross? God needed us to see what happens when we sin and live life without Him. It is tragic. It is painful. It is an eternity of suffering and pain without our Creator. Jesus took on the sins of the entire world and the punishment of those sins so that the world would not have to. This sacrifice became an offering for all of humanity, that despite our sins and trying to exist without God, we can still have eternal life with Him. Because of Jesus' ultimate act of love, we still have the doors of eternity open to us with our Creator, if we choose...
In a few hours, Jesus will be carrying His cross to Calvary . He will soon take on all of my sins so I can still spend eternity with my Creator. Despite my brokenness and my failings, God still loves me passionately and wants me to be with Him in heaven. Good Friday is a day to remember who made us and who we belong to. It is a day to remember how serious the fate is of those who turn away from God's love and do not live with Him. It is a day to remember how passionately in love God is with us, and that no matter what we have done or where we have been in our lives, He desires us and will do whatever He can to have us with Him for eternity in heaven.
Thank you Jesus, for such a gift.