how he loves us

For those of you who are as out of the loop as I seem to be, incredibly, it's Good Friday. My church does a service in the evening full of imagery and experience in hopes to bring us closer to the reality, the gravity of the Cross.

I spent much of yesterday dreading going there. Dreading sitting with the darkness, the bleakness of all Christ endured. Last year, unlike ever before, I felt called to be there, to sit in my sin, my shame, my guilt...and I did. This year I am not in that same place and I felt confused and disconnected.

Then I heard this: What would it look like for me to enter into the service tonight with a desire to know in deeper, truer ways that I am loved? Loved. To grasp in even a small, tiny way that this, above all else, is the reason for the cross – more than my guilt, my shame, my sin, God loves me and wanted to save me from sin and death. That each insult, each blow, each nail was bore out of love for His lost sons and daughters.

For me, I am feeling called to sit with the incredible truth that I am God’s beloved. I am Christ’s beloved. As I enter into the story of the cross tonight, I hope to know more than any other time in my life, that I am loved by my Father, by Jesus, and by the Holy Spirit. And that truth is more important, more powerful, more beautiful, and more real than everything else.