So, the other afternoon I picked Ellie up from school. As with most days she had some prized paper she was very anxious to share with me. This one had pictures and scriptures to tell the Easter story. She told me the entire Easter story with great detail from the men going to get the donkey for Jesus' triumphal entry to Jesus being raised from the dead. I know that the Easter story is not new information to Ellie but sitting there listening to every detail of Jesus' betrayal and death coming out of my four year olds mouth stung....spears, blood, whips....these are things four year olds should never know about.
As I sat there I thought about the WHOLE history given to us in the Word....all the way back to the beginning - Adam and Eve. They had it made - beautiful garden, need of nothing, everything was right....so right that they felt no shame, fear, judgement, inadequacies, etc. - it was perfect. BUT then came ol' crazy head Satan. He tempted, she took, she shared and in flooded shame, fear, pain, jealousy and every other thing we were not suppose to experience. Killing came so naturally after the fall that Adam and Eve's very children would face it when Cain killed Abel. Fast forward thousands of years and I'm riding in a car where my four year old is explaining this gruesome death of our Lord to me like it's totally normal.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad she knows every horrid detail but it breaks my heart that this pain is part of life. God wanted so much more for us. The redeeming factor of all of this is that it truly is the greatest love story that ever was. I love that Ellie knows every horrid detail because it can only intensify the understanding of just how far God was willing to go to save her.
I'm all over the place with this and the connections I'm making to the Easter story...I know...but going with that last thought - just try to imagine what it would be like to purposely allow your child to suffer...to be put on trial in the middle of the night with no public witnesses for a crime they didn't commit....to be whipped so that their skin hangs in shredded pieces....to carry the incredibly heavy beams of wood that would later aid in their slow, miserable death....to be mocked, spit at, and hated - once again for doing the right thing....to have a crown of big, thick thorns spun around and shoved onto their head slicing skin all around...to have hands and feet nailed to these beams now...for a spear to be shoved in their side...for their body to shut down one organ at a time in the slowest, most painful way possible.
I don't know about you, but neither Jason or Ellie are perfect, but I can't for a second fathom doing that or being able to watch that knowing I had the power to stop it. So yes, that is the greatest love story known to man. That's how much he loved you and that's how much he loved me. He knew we'd still mess up, disappoint, struggle with a whole myriad of issues from jealousy to apathy and from pride to judgement, YET he still loved us enough to do that.
There is incredible hope in the story of the cross....wherever you are this Easter, I beg of you to stop and soak it all in again. As uncomfortable as it may seem, pause on every awful detail of the Easter story and see the love threaded into each piece.
I know most of us know this one but it's important enough to say it again...
"This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why, so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in Him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn't go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person's failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him." -John 3:16-18 (The Message)
