Love

I have a little sapphire and silver cross my brother got me for Christmas almost two decades ago. It's pretty, but I don't wear it much. If you think about it, it's an odd thing to wear around your neck; sort of the ancient equivalent to a noose, a guillotine, or an electric chair, except for crucifixion was far crueler.

I often think of that moment when Jesus wept and "sweat blood", begging His Father to spare Him. Jesus was frightened. He wanted to live. He had the free will to choose so if He wanted, but instead He prayed "Not my will, but Yours", and gave up His life so that we could live.

As a child, I remember sitting in the dimly-lit sanctuary on Good Friday, picturing rusty nails the size of railroads spikes driven between the bones on my wrists, right in that hollow spot where they wouldn't tear from the weight of a hanging body. It made me feel sick. Still, I pictured Jesus fearless and strong, maybe even a little stoic. After all, He was the Son of God.

Now, I imagine Him as someone my own age, kneeling in rhe dirt, alone with the horrible, suffocating fear He must have felt, weeping in sheer terror while His friends -His support system- couldn't even stay awake long enough to offer the bear minimum of comfort. Maybe it's because I'm older and I know adults aren't invincible, but my heart breaks imagining Him in that moment, let alone hanging naked and bleeding from a tree.

One of my favorite verses is John 15:13: “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” It wasn’t a gentle death. But even knowing what it would cost, He loved us enough to sacrifice Himself anyway—after being betrayed and abandoned by nearly everyone.

Moreover, He knew that most of the people He loved and died for would still turn away or reject His sacrifice. And still, He believed it was worth it.

God's love is crazy. Completely and utterly crazy. But it's not impulsive.

Maybe that’s why I don’t wear crosses much. The sacrifice behind them feels too big—too powerful—to reduce to glittering pendants and accessories. I’m not ashamed of the symbol. It is beautiful. But somehow, it feels too small.

But then again, maybe that's the point. Humility made powerful through great love.

Jesus was fully God, but He was also fully man. A man born in a stable, to parents too poor to offer more than a few doves as a sacrifice. A man who was divine—yet still just another person who laughed and cried, who had favorite foods and colors and fears, just like the rest of us.

He understands everything we feel and experience, because He lived it. He understands pain better than anyone. And He has a heart that loved, broke, and bled for the entire world, and for everyone who would ever live on it. Only His was one which Death could not keep from beating for more than a weekend.

The cross isn't just a symbol of death—it's a symbol of Love that went to the very end of suffering and came back with life in its hands. The Good Shepherd will stop at nothing to save His sheep. He doesn't turn away from the lost or the wounded—He runs toward them, no matter the cost. Even when the sky went dark and hope seemed buried, goodness was not undone. Evil doesn’t get the final word.

Because the tomb is empty. Death is defeated.

And through His sacrifice, we too will be raised to live with Him forever, where death is no more and no one will ever weep or hurt again.

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." -John 3:16