A Father's Look At Easter
One week ago, I found out that my daughter had died. We do not know how or why, but after fifty-four days, she stopped growing and her little heart stopped beating those 144 beats per minute we had seen the week before. I initially wasn’t sure how to react. When the emotional dust settled, I felt empty. I was heartbroken. I felt so much pain over a child that I never met. Over a child that I will not know in this life. My daughter will never know pain or sorrow or fear, but instead left that world behind and went directly to paradise. For that I am grateful. But I still hurt. Still there is an emptiness. But by comparison, my pain is nothing.
Two millennia ago, God’s Son died. God knew Him well. He sat at the right hand of God in paradise where he knew no pain or sorrow or fear, and He came to this world, leaving that behind. God sent Jesus, knowing full well the suffering He would endure. He knew the brutality of Crucifixion, and yet He sent His Son to endure it for us. For me.
I am ashamed to admit it, but I would trade most anyone I know for the chance to hold my daughter. For the chance to see her grow up. For the chance to see her graduate. For the chance to walk her down the aisle. For birthdays. For holidays. Even for the chance to comfort her through the inevitable pain and sorrow. I would trade you, reader, for her. But that is why I am not God.
I would trade you for her, but God traded Jesus for you. And for me. For all of our sin and failure. For all of MY sin and failure, God allowed his only Son to be beaten and mocked and tortured. He allowed His only Son to be killed, and on a cross at that, for us. For me.
I know only the pain of a father whose daughter died peacefully and opened her eyes to find herself in the arms of God.
How much more did the God of Creation suffer to bring us- to bring me- into the Kingdom?
This is as true tonight, as I lay in bed listening my tiny son squirm in his bassinet as it was a year ago mouring the loss of our first child. God is good.
