Unshakable and Lasting Love

Recently, a mother used her own body to shield her young children as two tornados ripped through her Midwest home one after the other.  Wrapping the girl and boy in a comforter, she threw herself on top of them just as the house walls flew apart and two steel beams crashed down on her legs leaving her immobilized and hemorrhaging.  When the storms passed, her son  ran for help and they were rescued. The children survived without a scratch, but both the

mother’s legs needed to be amputated.

Sacrificial Courage
National Geographic once reported that after a devastating forest fire in Yellowstone National Park, a ranger found the carbonized remains of a bird at the base of a tree.  Tapping with his stick, the petrified shell fell over, and from under the dead wings scurried out three tiny chicks, kept safe and sound by their mother’s steadfast courage during the blaze.(1)

These stories not only capture the stirring depths of a mother’s devotion, but that all real, life-changing love is a costly, substitutionary sacrifice.(2)

There for the Taking
Can all of us love this way?  Jesus did, with a love not just for a few, but billions.  He willingly gave his life as payment for our failures, suffering an excruciating death so that we might emerge from under his broken body forgiven, renewed and restored to a rightful relationship with a holy God.  His forgiveness is free – there is nothing we can ever do to deserve it or earn it – all we need to do is reach out and embrace it.

The Cost of Love
Jesus lived and died to rescue us from our own destruction and make us whole.  May such a sacrifice move us to open our hearts, trust Him with our lives and rush under the shelter of His wings both now and forevermore.
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(1)  (2) Tim Keller, “King’s Cross, the Story of the Word in the Life of Jesus”, (Dutton, 2001)