the weight of Love

Station 3: Jesus Falls the first time

“Yet it was our pain that he bore,
our sufferings he endured.
We thought of him as stricken,
struck down by God and afflicted,
But he was pierced for our sins,
crushed for our iniquity.
He bore the punishment that makes us whole,
by his wounds we were healed” Isaiah 53: 4-5

“Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” John 1:29

True Love requires true sacrifice of self.  I am pretty sure anyone who has kids will attest to this.  When a newborn starts whaling at 4 AM, it is not enough to say “it’s okay honey bear, I love you”.  That baby doesn’t care what you say.  That baby only knows comfort in the arms of their parents, and the soothing touch of his mama as she feeds him in the dark of night. 

And no, that baby, for many years to come, will not compute that mama and dada waking up at 4 am to feed and hold and comfort his precious little screaming self was a complete gift of self-sacrficing love.  We will never fully compute what the Love of Jesus cost Him, either.  

In fact, if that baby was anything like yours truly, it may take upwards of twenty something years for that baby to realize “hey, my parents had a life before I was born.  Weird. They had time and stuff to do stuff that they wanted?  Hmmm.  Really weird.  Because all my life, here I was thinking that their entire reason for being was to take care of my siblings and me.  I thought that everything they did--the hours and hours and hours of no sleep and the days where they kept going on no sleep and the millions (maybe even billions) of loads of laundry and years and years of surgeries and work days and scrubbing the toilet and cleaning up my throw-up and all my other messes and refereeing unreasonable bickering matches about closet sides and who really draped their clothes over the clothes racks instead of hanging them up (ahem LIANNA)--and all the countless things that went unnoticed and were forgotten in the shuffle--yeah, all that.  I thought that was like their job and they had to do it.  

It was their vocation, the raising of the four of us wild indians, but the way my momma and dad did it day after day after year after year, proved their love for us.  Having been exposed to the sadnesses in the world, I know that not every parent does it this way.  Not every parent dies to themselves and lives for their children and spouse. But I know that mine took seriously what Jesus said:  “I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another” John 13:34

Then they looked at the Cross, and realized that this is love.  To lay down one’s life for another is what love is.  And like all humans, like the Perfect human, we all fall under the weight of the crosses in this life.  Jesus fell, too.  He fell so we know it is okay to fall under the weight of life’s crosses.  If we are human, we will fall and we will hurt in the process of loving others.  

My parents weren’t perfect because they were human.  And they fell, too.  All parents do.  But my parents remembered what Jesus did after He fell that first time.  He, by the Grace of God, stood back up and continued to carry His cross.  

It wasn’t until I watched one of my dear friends have a baby that my realization about parenthood being a complete sacrifice of love when it is done in the light of Christ’s sacrifice, dawned upon me.  The difference was that I knew my friend before she was married or had a baby.  I knew her in her footloose and fancy free days of college.  Bottom line is, we did what we wanted when we wanted to. We had our school work to attend to, but aside from that, we were kids in the candy store of life.  And college was a free doughnut fresh off the krispy kreme conveyer belt ripe for the taking.  All sweets metaphors aside (you can tell this week of Lent is waning and Resurrection day is blooming in the horizon), I saw the before and after picture.  And I saw the change and I saw the sacrifice.  And it was so beautiful and it transformed her and her husband in a this-could-only-be-God’s-doing kind of way.  

From the worlds perspective it would look bad:  Exhaustion, time consumed by another person who cries, sleeps, and poops. All. the. time., laundry, cooking, cleaning.  Repeat.  

From the eyes of Love it looked very different:  Tender moments only witnessed by Heaven of the mother gazing at the child and the child at the mother, husband and wife loving this new immortal soul from heaven so much that they would give up everything for his sake, dinners with laughter at the lack of sleep and at the new most adorable attribute of the baby (how he curls that left pinky just so), moments savored in the night when all was quiet and still, and the sounds of those you love most breathing in deeply God’s love.  

From the eyes of the world, Jesus falling under the weight of a heavy cross is hideous.  This tortured, beaten, spit upon, Man, crowned with thorns, unrecognizable through the blood, falling to the ground, surrounded by a crowd of angry, screaming people-people who wanted Him to suffer and die.  A scene the world would quickly long to look away from.  

From the eyes of Love, it looked very different:  “For God so Loved the world, that He sent His one and only Son, that whosoever believed in Him may not perish, but may have eternal life” John 3:16.  This tortured, ravaged, Man was God Himself.  He is the Creator of all that is Beautiful and good, and He took upon all that is ugly and evil, that we might live forever.  That Cross was made of Love, a Love so deep and so infinite, He Who is God fell under the weight of it.  He was surrounded by the people He wanted in Heaven with Him.  He looked at each of His scourgers, tormenters, and everyone that wanted Him dead.  He looked at each of us, who were the cause of His fall, and Loved us infinitely.  Enough to pick up the weight of Love, and keep carrying it.  

God will never leave us to fall under a weight too heavy to bear.  He will always be right there, carrying the Cross with us, and for us.  No one knows the weight of being human like Jesus.  No one carried all of it on their shoulders except He.   He knows the weight of each one of our crosses.  He knows the size and the shape, and He knows exactly what we can take.  “No trial has come to you but what is human. God is faithful and will not let you be tried beyond your strength; but with the trial he will also provide a way out, so that you may be able to bear it.” Romans 10:13

Ask, and we will receive supernatural strength to bear a human burden.  Ask, and He will place His Heart of Love in ours and give us the grace to Love as He Loves.   Ask, and He will always give us the strength to get up after we fall under the weight of our cross.  

Because He Loves us.  There is absolutely no other reason.  I want to be able to say, “well, it’s because I did this or that extra great, or was extra nice to that person and prayed extra a lot the other day.  That’s why He is blessing me.  That’s why He loves me”.  But that is, to put it nicely, bologna.  Nothing I have ever done has made Him Love me more or made me more worthy to die for.  

It is because He Loves us.  The end.  And actually, just the beginning, too.  After all, He makes all things new (Rev. 21:5).

“See, I am doing something new!

Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

In the wilderness I make a way,

in the wasteland, rivers” Isaiah 43:19

He is putting rivers in our deserts, Resurrection day is approaching.  Have a blessed, happy weekend!