3 Days ...

It's a period of 3 days in early spring - the new season that marks the long winters' end. Winter as we all know is a time that's often cold, harsh and lifeless. It's a period marked by creations' slumber and among the seasons, winter represents hardship, barrenness and even death in nature. It's a time when creation suffers due to separation from the life giving warmth of the sun - much like the period of mans' separation from the warmth of Gods' close presence and relationship in the garden of Eden. It's a period of harshness, deprivation ... and wrath. The changing of the seasons and the occurrence marked by the 3 days in question aren't tied together by coincidence. Their timing together was part of a plan set into motion at the moment God created the earth.

Because of Gods' infinite wisdom, this life contains many parallels. Many are found in creation, our own bodies, relationships between people, and things that occur in the nature He created around us. They bear revelation of spiritual importance and they aren't coincidence. They're part of a master plan that give us a glimpse of spiritual truths and they echo many things that our Lord's already told us through his word. But among these parallels, the changing of the seasons in nature and the timing of the events marked by these 3 days were divinely scheduled to represent something of extreme importance. So important that we can't overlook it and have a full appreciation for our Lords' wisdom and planning or what He's telling us.

Our 12 month calendar is set to accommodate the 4 seasons we see around us every year. But as in many things of our God, what we can't see with our eyes is the far more important and the eternal. I believe that there are spiritual seasons as well as the ones we experience in nature. These being seasons we experience individually in our relationship with our Lord ... and then perhaps eternal seasons as well.

The 3 days in question mark the grandest and most profoundly important changing of seasons since mans' creation on the eternal calendar. They coincide with the birth of new life in creation around us, but they alone mark the end of the season of barrenness, deprivation and impending death that existed between the children of creation and the Father God who created them. They need to be celebrated with the reverence, awe and jubilation of one sitting in an electric chair sentenced to death whose sentence was reversed at the last minute - because our situation was very much the same.

As we continue to walk with the Lord, we like many others are changed and transformed in our thinking and perspective by His grace. As Christians truly participating in a relationship with Him, we find ourselves becoming more and more aware spiritually - and less and less subject to the ways, thinking and perspective of the world. But what we become aware of as we begin to see things from our Gods' perspective or viewpoint isn't always pleasant.

As a man, I'm so far inferior to the God who created me that I don't even register on the scale to be measured. But even in my flesh, if I try to imagine as a husband and a father what I might feel in a similar situation to some of the things our Lord has experienced in what we can know ... I'm devastated. My humanity could not even begin to bear in the smallest portion the things that He's allowed Himself to suffer repeatedly on behalf of the very creatures He created out of love. But then we, bound to a death sentence due to an unfathomable debt of sin, disrespect, ingratitude, unfaithfulness and a host of other valid offenses against the very God who gave us life ... find our sentence commuted to eternal freedom and life. But at what cost?

Was it we who knowingly gave our child or most beloved person to be tortured, humiliated and murdered to save the life of someone who by their own actions declared themselves to be our enemy? Parents, husbands, wives, grandparents and lovers of another, ask yourself - would you do this? Would you sacrifice the person you love most in the world to a savage death to save someone who deserved nothing more than your wrath? If you were that child or that loved person, would you willingly go to your bloody and agonizing death to save someone who by their actions and in some cases the words of their mouths are telling you that they despise you? Would you? These thoughts are horrible and mind numbing, but not even close to the same scale as what we're talking about in reality.

The Father who gave His son, the only son born of His Spirit, to this bloody fate... was the Creator, ... not the mere created. He had no reason to do what He did except for the value that He chose to place on us, remembering that we of ourselves are worthless without Him. Then consider that the Son, who knowingly and willingly allowed Himself to suffer mercilessly at the hands of someone who was so unworthy of anything other than death was no mere human powerless to change His fate.

He was .. and IS the one and only Morning Star, Son Of Heaven, King of Kings, Lamb Of God, Word, Creator, Redeemer, Adored Of The Angels, Christ, the One Whose Name Creation Cries Out! At any moment with a whisper He could have saved Himself and damned all of us to our deserving fate. He knowing the Fathers' plan, knew this from the beginning. But still He came ... not that anyone but the Son of God and men could do it, because no one else could, but would you have come?

If we, the very children that He adores, do not show awe, respect, joy and gratitude equal to the acts of our God on our behalf, then who will even care to notice Him, let alone desire to know Him? If we're restrained in our worship of Him and our reverence and service toward Him, then we by our failures are leaving others to die in ignorance of His awesome greatness. On top of that we would be doing it to His face. What would/are we be saying to Him about what He's suffered on our behalf? What would/are we be saying to the very one who took our death by His own choice? What would/are we be saying about the ones that He suffered to save that don't yet even know He exists because of our apathy toward His acts? You can reason what you will, but give thought to the truth of what I'm telling you. I'm convinced that we'll bear guilt for those around us now if we see them later suffer the result of our inaction and lack of true response due to our God when they suffer the wrath that should be for all of us.

Each year as spring arrives we begin to hear talk of clothing sales, candy, rodents that deliver eggs, and a whole host of things that the world choose to relate to the 3 days in question. It's a disgrace and a shameful response to the acts of a selfless God. But given the mentality of the world, it's not altogether surprising. However, such an awesome sacrifice, surely felt by our God and our Savior, and delivered on behalf of such lowly creatures as we are, is deserving of a response far greater from those who know better. Our response should be worthy of an act of God - supremely royal and Holy - fully recognizing the grave circumstances around His awesome, mysterious and selfless acts on our behalf.

3 days ... crucifixion ... tomb ... resurrection. 3 days that mark the end of Gods' wrath toward men. 3 days that mark the end of the season of death - spiritual winter, and the beginning of spring - the promise of life to come. Unwarranted, undeserved and unimaginable ... a gift from our great, all-powerful and awesome God ... to creatures so unworthy as us. Celebrate it with the holy reverence and fervor due to the highest acts of compassion to the people He chooses to love so dearly!