I'm wide awake, it's 4:00 am on the dot and I'm laying here wide awake. I surfed the internet a bit, nothing really to see. I'm not in the mood to watch a waistless television show. I can't quiet my mind. I just taught the book of Luke last week, and have been meditating once again on the cross. This heavy piece of wood that my Savior had to drag up a hill after he had been whipped, scourged, beaten, mocked and condemned. "Carry the cross up the hill, to your death…You call yourself a king, where is your kingdom?" … We become so familiar with this as if it's a story in a book up on the shelf that we all read once as kids, knowing this "yeah, Jesus died for my sins" … do we ever stop to think about that?

 I know I get used to singing about it in worship songs, that his blood washed away my sins … it feels good to sing it … It feels good knowing, my sins are washed away... until I stop to think about how disgusting, brutal and dark that day was. A man getting his flesh ripped off his back, a man getting curses yelled in his face, a man getting nails driven through his hands and feet and hung up on the cross to just wait for death to come. A man who was also God, the Creator of the Universe, the Creator of those who persecuted him - hold on, that's us as well, the God whose love came down into the form of a man to die … to die for you and for me. 

This was in his plan ever since Genesis 3, when Adam and Eve decided they could outsmart him. That's how foolish we are as mankind, that we think we can outsmart this God. Challenge this God. Mock this God. Even from the beginning, he loved with the greatest love of all. Giving this promise of Redemption. Continuing to promise this through thousands of years. Prophecy being given about Jesus through the lives of so many in the Old Testament, they were all pointing towards Jesus. In the book of Psalms, David depicts the death of Christ in the most accurate way. How, Why? Is our God's love really this deep, this true, this strong that from the first sin done against him he gives this promise … and continues throughout history...the promise that says, as people we will fail over and over and over again but he will send his Son, his beloved to take our place …. to allow all the darkness of existence mark HIS SON. 

How easily we forget the surrender of Christ, that he did all this with a willing heart. He did the Father's will, not his own. The greatest act of selflessness and humility. He did all this in the face of uttermost hatred, still choosing to love. When we read "For God so LOVED the world, that he gave his only Son"  Our minds cannot even comprehend this love. Still we get numb to this, we forget about this unconditional love, that if we choose to turn from our dirty sin, if we choose to walk away from selfishness and pride, that this love then becomes our own. This love then pulls us out of darkness, this love stands in our place and says "you shall not taste death, but you will now have life, because you have chosen to believe and trust in this love." 

This love that was lead like a sheep to the slaughter. This love that became life. This love that conquered death. This love that is alive. This love that is called Jesus. 

There are many that are still dying in this world, lost in darkness. Many that are still enslaved to their sin.  There is hope. 

We are but a vapor on this earth. This world will pass away, and everything in it.  In Luke it says, "where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." 

I hope to live as though my treasure is in the palm of his hands, in the hands that are forever marked by the greatest love of all. 

To live surrendered to Jesus.