Love?

I am just now realizing how much I DON'T understand love. Don't get me wrong, I love my husband and my family and friends and would do anything to show them that, but with Easter just behind us, I was pondering how much Christ actually went through to show us how much he loves us.

I have a feeling love will be a wee bit clearer when I have a child, because then I will actually know what it would be like to sacrifice something you helped to form and something you think so highly of and want to protect with all your heart. I know how much it hurts me to see anyone I love hurt, even, and maybe pathetically, my dogs. God and Mary watched their son get beaten and mocked for telling the truth, bringing the best news of the world to the world, offering people freedom from their sins and sacrifices, and showing how unconditional love truly is.

We read the story of Christ's ultimate sacrifice and think how awful and hateful those people were, but we would have been doing the same thing. We mock Christ daily and he STILL loves us and still we are seen as princes and princesses in his kingdom. I just don't think I will ever be able to really understand or be able to explain to my own children the magnitude of what was done by our Lord.

And yet with all the sins that I have perfected, he still loves me and blesses me.

I'm also coming to grips with needing to act more Christlike. Revenge is not a word that should be in a Christian's vocabulary. When we are done wrongly, we are to "turn the other cheek" and forgive "not seven times, but seventy." We are not to publicize others' sins, because we too have our own "planks" that we must repent from. God gives us chance after chance to do the right thing, to show what love really is...GOD.