I recently overheard a conversation between two women that went something like this:

“I am SO embarrassed!  I put this purse on my arm while I was shopping to test it out, then totally forgot and walked out of the store with it!”

“Oh my gosh…what did you DO?”

“Well, I thought about going back and paying for it, but it was on clearance for $5.98 and I wasn’t going to go all the way back into the mall for $5.98…”

I don’t know how that hits you, but it kind of took me by surprise, especially because it’s just something I would never do –  I’ve been known to wait a second time in line just to return change I was mistakenly given in a drive-thru!

So I guess I should feel pretty superior to my purse-thieving friend, right?  Well….no.

Here is a quick summary of some of the events that met Jesus on this day we remember as “Good Friday.”

• No less than SIX trials before he was finally condemned
• One of his closest friends denied he ever knew him – not once, but three times
• He is whipped as the city cries for his crucifixion
• He is handed over to those who would do the “dirty work”
• Mocked by soldiers who adorned him with a “king’s crown” made of thorns
• Carries his own instrument of death – his cross – through the city to Golgotha
• Had his hands and feet nailed to the cross and hung for all to see
• Endured unimaginable physical, mental, emotional and spiritual anguish
• Asked God – his Father – to forgive those who put him there (!)
• Forgave a thief who hung next to him
• Asked his best friend to take care of his mother, and she him
• Cried out to God as he felt abandoned and utterly alone….
• After about six excruciatingly long hours of suffering……he died.

Why did he do it?  Have you ever truly asked yourself that?  Why would he go through all that?  It had to have been for the really “big” sins, because there must be a sliding scale, right?  There’s no way he would have gone through all this for a $5.98 purse, is there?

Well…..yes.  For the big sins and the tiny sins we don’t even like to think of as wrong, but it’s not just about sin….it’s about separation – and salvation.  See, I may not be a very “bad” seeming person on the surface, but it’s not about that.  It’s about a huge gulf that sin – all sin – created that separated me from Jesus.  And he wouldn’t have it.  He wanted us too badly – wanted to literally save us, and I do believe we were the faces he saw as he fought with every ragged, painful breath the impulse to blink toward heaven and call for an angel army to rescue him.  And he could have done that!  But he didn’t because he loved us so….it’s a mystery I’ll never understand, but I’m so thankful, aren’t you?

My every doubt, my every failure to believe, my willful disobedience, my arrogant fist-shaking at God, my broken-hearted anguish that accused him of not loving me….those were just some of the things that kept him there for me.  Yours may be different, but make no mistake – we all put him there.  And the beauty of salvation is that what was intended to keep us separated from God, he used as the very tool to save us!

No more guilt – no more chains – no more accusations….only grace now.

How can it be?  How can it be that because of this day in history, we are forever free?

Feeling oh so loved and forgiven,

Shellie <3

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How Can It Be?
Lauren Daigle