I could hear the sobbing from down the hall; my daughter was clearly heartbroken. As I ran to comfort her, to push aside her anguish and replace it with the massive onslaught of a fatherly hug, I asked her what was wrong. By the size of her monstrous tears, I immediately guessed that some small bone of hers must be broken, or at the least some treasured doll had been digested by the dog. Instead, she looked down limply and wailed,
“I don’t have any more strawberries!!!”
Now, a word clarification: this catastrophe occurred in February, and our house had not hosted strawberries of any sort since last summer. Yet, in my three-year-old’s amazingly-vivid imagination, a lack of imaginary strawberries was as disastrous as any Japanese tsunami.
Wanting to quiet this surging, blubbering tide, I quickly reached into my pocket and offered a fistful of air that I desperately hoped would be accepted as imaginary fruit. While suppressing the rising grin that threatened to undermine a daughter’s trust in her Daddy’s sympathy, I said, “Here, sweetie, I have some strawberries for you.” Apparently, however, my imagination was insufficient to adequately create new strawberries, and the meltdown continued until I suggested we forget the strawberries completely and go play a riveting game of “Candy Land” – a proposition that was gleefully accepted.
Unfortunately for most of us, what troubles us the most is far from imaginary. We have no need to invent devastation, as our lives are often full of all-too-real storms. For some, the storm involves a sudden and unwanted education about an evil disease. For others, it has been born on the winds of a declining economy. Some may simply have been awakened to the fact that their life is not as they had planned, and that they’ve spent more time trying to survive the storms than chasing their dreams.
None of us, however, have ever faced a storm quite like the one that was quickly approaching a young carpenter from Nazareth. Every step that He took carried Him closer not only to certain death, but the unimaginable suffering of bearing the whole world’s sin. And unlike the sudden traumas that often assault us, Jesus knew full-well the scope of this impending storm even before He first visited Bethlehem. He knew of the opposition that would arise, of the betrayal that would occur, of the torture, of the nails, and of the death.
And above all the impending suffering was the inescapable destiny of being forsaken by God the Father. Nailed to a tree, cursed by men and demons alike, Jesus took upon Himself a massive guilt – the tremendous burden of every sin ever committed. And in so doing, His fellowship with God the Father was severed. For the Son of God, nothing could have been more devastating.
As for us, even though it was our sins that put Christ on the cross, even though it might as well have been our hands that bore the hammer, His tremendous sacrifice does not add to our guilt. Instead it actually does quite the opposite. Jesus freely took our sins from us, and thus has provided us with the greatest possible gift: restoration. Through Him, sinners like us are redeemed and restored to right standing before the Father. By being forsaken, Christ secured our adoption.
But, like my daughter, we have to accept the free gift from our Father (whose gift, I should point out, is far greater than a fistful of air!). The exchange from sinful rebellion to forgiven restoration is not complete until we accept and believe that Jesus was who He said He was and that He did indeed die for us. Thankfully, though, this call to belief is not really a call to blind faith. Instead, it is based upon the single most important evidence in history:
an empty grave.
We can know for sure that Jesus is both fully God and fully man because He not only died, He was resurrected. We can know for sure that His sacrifice is sufficient to remove our guilt and our sins because He has the power over death itself. We can know for sure that His gift of redemption, His gift of grace, His gift of salvation is true because He proved His own deity on that first Easter.
And we can know for sure that Jesus is with us even when we lose all our strawberries. He has proven that He is alive, and when we trust in Him, no storm we will ever face will be too powerful, too traumatic, or too catastrophic. His sufficient grace will strengthen, sustain, comfort, guide, and heal everyone who follows after Him. The ironic beauty of the cruel cross is that Jesus provides not only the future hope of eternal life, but the present peace and joy of abundant life. Eternal and abundant life: far better than even the best game of “Candy Land.”
Soli Deo Gloria
Tim Cotten
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