easter overdue

I spent my Easter break at a place full of joy and love, a place that always puts a smile on my face, a place that will forever have my heart, a place I can see myself returning to for the rest of my life. This easter I decided to read the story of Jesus, but not just read it like I have done time and time again, but instead study it, dig deep deep into the Bible and the characters and the meaning. As many of you know, I am not the type of person to be super intellectual and philosophical, I mean I probably read the Bible six days out of the week and I am all about G O D time, but i like taking comfort in God's word rather than learning a history lesson and I rarely ask questions, so doing this was kinda a big deal and not easy in the slightest. But it was well worth it. Reading and comparing and contemplating and rereading and thinking and researching and then rereading and then really thinking about the books; Matthew, Mark, and Luke was frustrating and extraordinary all at the same time. I tried so hard to read the books as though I was studying them, but have you ever tried that? It is far too difficult to ignore the beauty of our Father and his beautiful sacrifice.

I began thinking of all the sins Jesus died for, and not everyone's sins, just the ones he died for because of me, and that is when the weeping began. I began to cry because of all the sin in my life, for all my past mistakes, from the small white lies to the things that I hide so deep inside hoping no one ever finds out. I cried because I know what is true, pure, and good and still I constantly knowingly choose to sin. I cried because of the pain my sin has caused. But mostly I cried because still after all this sin, I have a Dad whose love never fails, who chose to carry my sin for me and sacrifice his life so that I can continue to live. Then in my journal through the tears I managed to jot down a few things and somehow I ended up thinking it's something like this- you know that saying you would sing to bullies? The whole "I'm rubber your glue, whatever you say bounces off of me and sticks to you!" I get that we said that in 3rd grade trying to make ourselves feel better, but if you think about the story of Jesus and his crucifixion, he's kind of the glue and we are the rubber, except he NEVER said anything that deserved for him to be the glue. But imagine this pure good (white glue) person who stands there and lets all our sin bounce off of us and stick to him. Jesus carried our sins the day that he died for us. He became our glue and we still keep putting sin on him. I know we are human and it's in our nature to sin, but I also can't help but make silly promises to myself like I'm not going to do this or that anymore and I'm going to try to last a week without sinning, etc. etc. But the whole point is to understand God's unfailing beautiful kind unconditional love.

So I will leave you with this: "This is real love--not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins." -John 4:10

He has risen indeed, JESUS is ALIVE!