Today we went to a steak n' shake and had lunch. This particular restaurant had a gospel channel playing in it's dining room. Now I will not list it's location but I will list the station Joy FM.
I am not a big fan of contemporary Christian music but I am commending them here for taking a very unpopular stance and not being afraid.
Now when I was younger I would have thought wow, no one comes here to hear that music. Yet we were there and it was a good thing today, age gives wisdom.
A few other things have changed in my perspective.
When I was younger my mother had Christmas 1 week, the next week 8 days later my older sister's birthday and the next week 7 days later my birthday. I always wondered how she managed to make all these things always seem so effortless I mean that is a lot of gifts in a 2 week period. However, last year I realized something else. I was born a twin and my sister died 24 hrs after we were born, so my mother not only had to celebrate me but she had to mourn my sister.
Something I never really considered until now because I did not know my sister. Yet my mother never let on the pain that I ever saw.
1Co 13:11 When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
I write of these things for this reason.
Yesterday I had a thought, one that shook me to the core.
Jesus is God's Son. Jesus is God. Fully human, fully God. That Son that God watched be born, grow, walk, talk, and commune with, that child He watched on the cross, that Child ,He watched the humans He was dying for, beat Him mercilessly. That Child He saw on the cross paying a price for something He did not do and God could not stand to look at Him for the sin He was bearing that was not His.
Joh 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
God gave His son, the Son that He repeatedly told everyone that He was well pleased with.
Mat 3:17 And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.
Mat 17:5 While he yet spake, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them: and behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him. +
Do you know how much that must have cost the God of the universe? To watch His Son who knew no sin to become sin for us? To suffer and die for us, mankind, who repeatedly have turned our very backs on Him?
Now that I am older and I have fully grown kids that I have watched grow and thrive, I ca not imagine watching one of them go through anything like this and not doing all I could to protect them, stop the pain, the humiliation and the degradation.
Yet God allowed it, planned it, and had to watch it with out sending all the armies of Heaven no matter how much He wanted to.
God is the grieving parent, the disciplinarian, the provider, and the comforter all in One. How did He not obliterate all who were hurting His Only Begotten? Because He loved us so much, it had to be that way. No matter how much He loved His Son He knew there was no other way. For Us.
If that does not break your heart, I do not know what will.
For God so loved the World He gave His Son to be beaten, scourged, kicked and humiliated. Hung between heaven and earth naked, bloody, and degraded. That we might have life.
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