Mar 1 2018
Dear Friends,
Here we are, in the season of Lent. It is a season of contemplation,
Lent is a season when we walk with Jesus to Jerusalem, to Holy Week, to the cross. As we make this journey, it is natural for us to wonder why Jesus would put himself through suffering and agony. He could have avoided it. He didn’t have to go. But he chose to go.
What would motivate him to do something like that? What would motivate himself to sacrifice himself for the likes of you and me?
I find the answer in the story of a father and his four-year-old boy.
Zig Zigler told the story of attempting to put together a tricycle for his four-year-old son, Tom. He said he was as frustrated as could be. The pieces just wouldn’t seem to fit together the way they were supposed to. The diagram provided by the manufacturer didn’t match up to the nuts and bolts and pieces that he had laid out on the floor in front of him.
He had tried—he really had. And it had already taken him three times as long as the manufacturer said that it would take to put this tricycle together, but there it lay in pieces on the floor.
Truth be told, he was ready to give up. He was ready to throw the whole thing away.
And then his little boy walked up to him as he sat there on the floor with pieces around, and said these words: “I sure do love you, dad.”
And with those words, he was motivated to do whatever it took to put that tricycle together, and that is exactly what he did.
What would motivate Jesus to go to the cross, to be humiliated, to be mocked, to be insulted, to be beaten, and to be hung on that cross to die? Nothing short of love.
Jesus loves us more than we can even imagine—enough to die for sinful people like you and me.
And that’s the message of the cross… In fact, that’s the message of the entire New Testament.
God is love. God loves you and me so much that He is willing to do most anything to make sure that we will be with him forever in heaven.
If there’s one thing to get out of the season of Lent, is to become aware of how very precious you are to God. That’s a humbling thought. Yet it is true. You mean the world to God. Enough to suffer and to die so that you will live.
During this holy
In his grip,
Pastor