Good Morning All,
One
time, when my youngest son was just a barely toddler, his mother took him
shopping with his grandmother to Kmart.
As they came out of the store, with him and all the purchases in the
shopping cart, the cart began to tip as one of the wheels fell off of the
sidewalk. He screamed, his mom screamed,
his grandmother screamed. As the cart
tipped, everyone tried to catch him. His
mom tried. His grandmother tried but it
was to no avail. The cart tipped and he
crashed into the pavement and scraped his nose up. He cried, his mom cried, his grandmother
cried. It must have been quite the
event.
I don’t know
if anyone else tried to catch him; I wasn’t there but I would assume that if
someone was there, they would have tried.
Most people will try and catch someone if they are falling. This tends to be a standard reaction,
especially for parents and grandparents.
If you ever have attended a high school sporting event where one of the
participants gets injured, it never takes long to figure out who the parents
and grandparents are. It is a common
response; very few people, if any, take any delight in the pain of their loved
ones. Most, if not all, will try
anything to help ease the pain.
When I visit
someone who is in the hospital, it seems that the spouse or the parent is more
upset than the patient is. We hate to
see our loved ones suffer. Most of us
would do anything, including trading places with them, in order to alleviate
the pain. We would take it all away if
we could.
This is a
similar response that God has towards us.
God’s response to us is out of love, out of the purest fatherly
love. God saw the pain and the suffering
and had compassion on us as a loving parent would. To quote Luther, “but God beheld our wretched
state.” God saw our hopelessness and did
what any loving parent would: he took our place. He took from us the cost of that pain, of
that sin. He lifted up Jesus on the
cross so that we would be lifted up out of our desperate state.
This is why
God sent Jesus to die in our place. His
love for us is beyond that of what a parent feels for their child. His is the perfect love that moved him to
send his only son to die in your place.
He replaced you with Jesus so that you may have life and have it
abundantly. He sent Jesus, not to judge
or condemn but to take your place so that all the pain and sadness could be
replaced, replaced with hope. This is
why Jesus came to walk on the earth; he came to bring healing. Whatever your condition; Jesus came to
restore us to life.
Father of all
good, you give us life. Because of your
great love we have life; because of your mercy we have hope. Defend us through the trials of this life so
that we may always see your love. Be
with those who are lost and unsure of your mercy. Give them hope. Bring them safely home. In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.
God’s Peace,
Pastor Bret
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