Redemption

Have you ever had the weight of brokenness settle on your shoulders and stay there for a while?

I bet if you've lived longer than a few years you have.

And it doesn't sit there like a fluffy comfortable pillow either. It's a hard, heavy, cumbersome sack of a thing and carrying it around is not fun at all.

It settled on me Tuesday.

Here's the back story-
As our first foster experience we were given the opportunity to provide respite care for a sweet couple while they were away working for the Lord. So that meant two weeks with little chubby cheeks to kiss and love on. Every person who knows me knows that when it comes to anything like that, I'm in.

But the sweet kisses and cuddles and the fact that we even get to do this at all-means that there was at first brokenness somewhere.

This week of Passover that we're celebrating as we anticipate Sunday and the celebration of the glorious empty tomb....it means that at first there was a whole lot of wrong and a whole lot of hurt for the need of such a price to be paid.

And I think if we miss the heaviness of the sin that required such a sacrifice-we miss the beauty of the Cross.

As I sat Tuesday and fed a sweet little man some peas and banana baby food while waiting for his birth family to arrive for a visit, only to sit there a bit longer and longer and finally realize that they weren't coming-I felt the heaviness of the sin infested world we live in settle on my shoulders.

I looked into big bright blue eyes that don't even understand rejection yet and thought about the circumstances on both ends.

I wasn't mad, I was hurt.

Don't be fooled for a minute, but for the grace of God-that could have been me on the other side of the table Tuesday.

I could have easily been the one struggling, not showing up, not being the person that I need so desperately to be to the family I have around me.

Because it's not me-I get to see the other side of the spectrum and look straight into the face of the ones that the sin trickles down to and ends up affecting.

The enemy never sets out for just one. He is in it to kill, steal and destroy whole families.

And that's where it would end if Jesus hadn't ridden into Jerusalem on a donkey to the shouts of "Hosanna, King of the Jews." and willingly laid his own life down-

And because he was both God and man you know that although He knew what was required of Him as part of the triune God-head, he felt every lash of the whip with his man flesh that He so gloriously put on to be like us. The sting of the thorns on his head, the spear in his side and the nails in his hands and feet felt just like it would if that were you and I on that cross.

Deathly.

He did it so that every bad choice, every wrong move, wrong turn and the weight of the whole world's sins could be atoned for with one drop of His precious blood.

As I rocked sweet little foster babe yesterday I was more thankful than ever for the precious blood of Jesus.

I don't want his life to be lived in brokenness-and you know what?

It's not going to be.

Because of the cross. Only because of the cross.

Redemption can come to heal and bring restoration to people in unsafe, unwanted, unhealthy situations because the price of our Lord and Savior paid.

Sunday I will wake up three precious littles instead of two and walk into the sanctuary to praise my Jesus for the redemption He so graciously gave us.

It was needed, the sin debt could never be paid without it.

It wasn't cheap, He suffered beyond human recognition.

And it isn't wasted now, I hold a sweet new little redeemed by the power of the Cross.