If Feeling Pain Is The Price For Feeling Love...

April 27, 2003

            If you have never loved, you have never lived.  If you have never cared for someone, your existence is meaningless.  If you have never felt the searing pain of a broken heart, you must not be alive.

            Love is the greatest thing in the world.  To experience it, you must be vulnerable.  You must be wiling to receive wounds, to be hurt, to suffer pain.  You might be persecuted.  You might be mocked.  You might be shamed...all for the ecstasy and the agony of love.

            The pain of childbirth melts away as you hold that precious baby in your arms.

            The pain of surgery must be endured for beneficial outcomes.

            The heartbreaking death of a loved one must be suffered for the realization of the resurrection.

            When love comes in, pain must retreat.  Pain must back away, for love sacrifices.  Love overcomes.  Love restores.  Love triumphs.

            When Lane, our youngest son, portrayed Jesus in past pageants, I endured emotional upheaval big time!  When, Lane, depicting Jesus, came down that aisle shouldering that old wooden cross, I lost it.  I sobbed out loud as I witnessed the beating, the mockery, the anguish and pain of just the acting out of this ordeal.  Lane stumbled beneath the load while soldiers beat him as he struggled to get back up.  The red stains on his clothing and body and the jeering of the soldiers pierced my heart, even though it was just a pageant.

            My youngest granddaughter sobbed:  “I wish they were doing that to me instead of my daddy!”

            A small child behind me said, "Don’t cry Mommy!”

            I must have felt only a tiny part of the pain that Mary must have felt…the agony of seeing her Son nailed to a cross for the sins of mankind.

            Not only was Jesus Mary’s Son, he was her Savior.  I wonder, in the deepest recesses of her heart, if Mary realized it had to be.  Her Son was mankind’s only hope.

            Jesus’ love for his earthly mother touches my heart.  While he was dying on the cross, writhing in pain for our sins, he thought of the physical care of his earthly mother, when he said to John:  “Behold thy mother.”  (John 19:27)

            As Lane ascended upward at the end of the Pageant, I felt once again the depths of God’s love.  He gave his only Son to be nailed to a cross.  Jesus allowed himself to be ridiculed, mocked, scorned, beaten and killed…all because of love.  He only lived 33 short years, but his life changed the world forever.

            Jesus voluntarily lay down his life as an atonement for our sins.  He arose from the grave and is seated at the right hand of the Father, interceding daily for you and me.

            He felt the greatest pain ever known to man.

            He is the greatest love ever known to man.

            If feeling pain is the price for feeling love, Jesus thought we were worth it.

            Hallelujah!

            He is risen.

            He is risen indeed!