Good Friday: What Was He Thinking?

When you are young you always hear about stuff that seems to be for older people.

Experiencing those things for yourself changes everything.

Earning money, getting a girlfriend or boyfriend, having your input matter on a family decision, shooting the winning basket, etc.

The cross was like this for me.  It was a big, general concept.

Jesus died for the whole world.

I knew it was important, but it was out there, ahead of me somehow.

In the summer of 1996, a series of frustrations led me into a situation where Father made the cross
very real.  It was that summer that I finally realized that Jesus' death on the cross was for me.  Not just the whole world, but me.

He had me on his mind when he was on the cross. 

Me.

The love that held him in that awful pain was love for me. 

He wanted nearness with me so badly.  Or, as the book of Hebrews puts it, "For the joy set before him, he endured the cross."  I was that joy.

For the first time in my life I felt utterly, completely, lavishly, fully
l o v e d.

But there was someone else he was thinking of on that cross:

you.

That is a very Good, Good Friday.