The Risk of Love

I don't know if I can even full express the thought that has been running through my head the last few days. I have been thinking about Advent, and preparing my heart to celebrate His birth, and marveling that He came. 

I mean, to think that the God of the universe--the Creator and Sustainer of all that we see would stoop to come to earth as a newborn baby--to live and die for me is amazing! 

But then it struck me--even before He created us He knew that He would have to send His Son to die. The all-knowing God, knew full well that His creation would rebel and sin and that the only way to restore that relationship would be to send His Beloved Son to the cross. And He created us anyways. 

So when life seems hard, and He seems far away, trust in the unfailing love of a God who loved us so much that He would rather send His Son to die for us than not even create us in the first place. The God who loves us so much that He created us, knit us together in our mother's womb and relentlessly pursues His lost creation to bring them back to Him. 

Oh what a love!

I am the Resurrection

 John 11: 17b- 27 "So when Jesus came, He found that he had already been in the tomb four days. 18 Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles away. 19 And many of the Jews had joined the women around Martha and Mary, to comfort them concerning their brother.

20 Now Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met Him, but Mary was sitting in the house. 21 Now Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 But even now I know that whatever You ask of God, God will give You.”

23 Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”

24 Martha said to Him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”

25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. 26 And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?”

27 She said to Him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that You are the Christ, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.”

I had been thinking lately about The Lord's interaction with Martha when Lazarus dies and she say's to the Lord,  " I know he'll be raised on the last day." The Lord's response puzzled me for a long time because what He says sounds like a correction even though what she said is true. He says, " I am the resurrection and the Life.... Do you believe this?" Martha doesn't know that He is about to raise her brother from the dead and so her hope is in the future resurrection of the dead; the hope that we believers also share. So why does the Lord seem to be correcting her and what is it that she, and so often we, fail to understand? It struck me that the message for all of us is the first two words, "I am." Not I was or I will be but I am. When we stand weeping at the grave of one we love we can know that although to us their resurrection seems to be a future event to the One who always is it is already done--That is why He says, "whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die."