He grew fingers, toes, a brain, and skin.
He was squeezed through a birth canal.
He sat in poopy diapers.
He learned the walk, talk, run, and play.
The God of the universe who knows chemistry and physics we haven't even discovered.
He had siblings antagonize him.
A faulty father, whose every sin was laid before his Son, was his teacher.
He went to Hebrew school to learn the very Word of God. The Word that He himself had spoken.
He went through puberty.
The God who was, is, and always will be unchanging... had pimples.
He recruited followers. They were blind, stupid, and arrogant. He lived every day with them for three years, and entrusted the spread of the gospel to them despite their ignorance.
He had aching feet.
He got dirty. His hair was greasy.
He experienced damp, uncomfortable clothing, money issues, and lack of food.
The God who perfectly created all food, humans, and animals, joined us in our sin-filled discomfort.
He cast out demons and was accused of being a demon.
He helped people and was driven from their town.
He was abused and hunted down for his willingness to heal.
He was rarely thanked.
He taught constantly. Nobody listened.
He lived perfectly. People still watched for him to fail, laid traps to trick him, and rooted for his down-fall.
He got tired. Bone-wearing, dead-dog, debilitatingly tired.
He was compassionate and gentle to the shy and timid.
He told his followers of the suffering, tragedy, and brutal trial that was coming. He told them again and again. They didn't listen. They just wanted to know which one of them was the most important.
He told them again. They fell asleep, with bellies full of food that he gave them, and he was left alone. With no friends. No prayer warriors. No one listening.
He was blameless. And he was arrested.
In a trial that fell apart because all the witnesses were lying, he alone told the truth. This truth caused the judges to rip their robes and wail and claim that the sham trial was over because he had accused himself. The lie of a trial was over because of the truth. And they claimed it was blasphemy.
He was quiet. People hurled angry, egotistical, jealous accusations.
He was beaten. He had made the muscles and sinews of each arm that beat him. He controlled the life breath of each man who mocked him. He did not stop them.
And then, after all this, he was skewered to beams of wood to die. He who caused trees to grow, who gave men minds to create good things, who designed the human body.
After all this... he was left alone.
The most precious, treasured, nurtured, constant love of his Father. The God he repeatedly withdrew to pray with, who sustained him, who nurtured him, who walked with him through the difficulty and humiliation of being a man and being God... He left.
He was alone. Pierced, throbbing, aching, despised, spit covered, misunderstood, lied about, ignored.
Alone.
"He loved them to the end." (John 13:1) This phrase sprang off the page at me. In the midst of pain, betrayal, discomfort, and sin... Jesus willfully chose to love us. Till the end. The power, the life-saturating force of this love is staggering. That in the moments when he was alone, when his body was ripped wide and throbbing, when his Best Friend and his Father did not look at him: he loved them to the end. When his mind could have filled with self-pity or anger, he chose to plant it firmly in love.
"For His steadfast love endures forever." (Ps. 106:1).
And then with a loud cry, he breathed his last.
"Truly this man was the Son of God!"(Mark 15:39)
No comments:
Post a Comment