What's so Good about Friday?

Before I was a parent, I thought I knew how much God loved me. I had loved my family, I had loved my friends, and I knew it was kinda like that. I love my husband absolutely, utterly, completely...but there is still the give and take of a marriage and its love relationship. I’d sacrifice for my husband without question, and I figured that was a lot like God’s Love...

That was before I glimpsed what His Love was like from God’s point of view. That all happened when I had children. I love my children dearly. It doesn’t matter if they’re constantly doing things I’ve told them not to do. It doesn’t matter if they refuse to give me a hug, or continually forget to say “thank-you”. Although I can’t say I have God’s patience with them when they are whining on and on about something insignificant, I can tell you that I still love them as much as when they are happy and smiling and behaving. I may be angry at their bad behaviour when they act like monsters, but I love them even in that anger.
Young children are incredibly self-centered. But I dare say that as “adults”, many of us are only a little better. While we wander around this planet doing things we know we shouldn’t do, whining about our lives instead of being thankful that we have been blessed with so much, thinking our life is all about us, there’s God watching, (sometimes shaking his head I’m sure), and loving us. We may love God, but truthfully our love with God is more one-sided than reciprocal. It’s like our love for Him is small, compact, pea-sized, and His for us is enormously mountainous.
I like to believe that I would be willing to give up my life to save another. But then, I think about Abraham being willing to kill his son for God. I can’t say that my faith would be strong enough to be willing to give up my child’s life. At work, I see worst case scenarios some days. Parents faced with a terrifying diagnosis, watching their child suffering, or dealing with a dying child. So often I see that same look on the mother or father’s face and I know that they are wishing that they could do something, anything to put themselves into their child’s place, to sacrifice themselves instead of having their child go through the pain. I don’t think I recognized this before I had my own children, and I hope that I never have to experience it first-hand as a parent.
But I am that child. My Father sacrificed His son, a part of Himself, to save me when I certainly didn’t deserve it. I know I still can’t fathom the immense depth of God’s love, but I now understand the nature of the sacrifice that was made for me.