I can’t think of anything worse than when the kids are sick. Not because it’s typically messy, or gross, or I don’t like cleaning up their puke or their snot or their (literal) crap. Not because of what it does to me.
Because of what it does to them.
Their playfulness becomes helplessness in the face of whatever is making them sick. Their joy is replaced with fever, or coughing, or whatever their symptoms are. It sucks worse than just about anything.
When the boys were sick last weekend there was a point where David had just gotten done throwing up in pretty much every room of the house and John was coughing like crazy. Jen was in the bedroom dealing with her own flu and I had just gotten the boys chilled out and resting.
I remember thinking I would gladly bear their illnesses if it were only possible. I would do anything to assuage their suffering.
I thought that again just now, at 0644, on the day before thanksgiving. I’m holding John as he sleeps and praying the antibiotics do their thing and we don’t need to take any more drastic measures, like the hospital.
I would take his pneumonia in a heartbeat and I would bear it gladly.
The conviction that just slammed into me is that’s how God feels about us. Ultimately, he didn’t just cure our illness (which was terminal). He gladly bore it for us, and he experienced everything on our behalf. He bore all, and suffered all, and he died.
God died.
For me. For my sons.
I can feel the baby breathing against my chest as I thumb type this, and I’m thinking about how much God loved the world.
I think about how much I love my kids, and that I would stop at no length to protect them from anything. I would be sickened, or beaten, or humiliated, even killed. I would literally do anything for them.
That’s what Jesus did.
A Work in Progress 