Once Upon A Time – Journey to the Cross Week #1

Once upon a time…

I love stories. I love to read them, to listen to them, to share them, and since I was a child these four words have always filled me with a sense of expectation. Four little words that have the power to transport us to another place, to embark on an adventure, discover new places, and introduce us to new situations and characters. These words fill us with anticipation and when we hear them or read them, we know a story is about to begin.

Easter is a love story. A story that tells of how God so loved the world that He gave His Son. If we aren’t careful, I think sometimes this story can become “background noise” to those of us who have been Christ-followers for a while. And we can lose sight of the power of those words.

God so loved the world – do we really understand what that means? Yes, God’s Love is so vast it defies full comprehension, but do we even try to take the time to understand it? To do that I think we need to go back to the beginning, where the triune God existed before time, before space, before life, in order to grasp a grander sense of the Love that initiated this story – our story.

Every story has a beginning, a once upon a time that births everything. A starting place from which to launch the plot and introduce the characters. As Easter approaches, I want to take the next few weeks to dive into the Easter story and similar to what we have done with Advent, let’s take some time over the next four weeks to focus in on different aspects of this story as we travel the road to the Cross – a story that also begins with four little words…

In the beginning God…

I don’t know about you, but those words grab my attention. Before anything else existed, before light was called into being across the vast expanse of a dark universe, before Earth was formed or the stars were hung in the night sky, there was God. The point of origin. The Source of Life. He was the beginning and it’s in Him that the foundation of the redemption story was laid.

I think it’s important to meditate on this. Because God loved us, even before there was a world. Before there was anything made or anyone to love. He loved us when we were but a thought in His mind and a desire in His heart. He loved us knowing that despite the beautiful world He would create, the gifts He would bestow, and the communion with Him that He would offer, we would turn away from Him. And the flawless beauty and harmony that He so would so carefully craft for us would become corrupted by sin’s decay.

In the beginning God…

God was not forced to write a story with us in it. In fact, in His Omniscience, He could have looked at all that would unfold and decided it wasn’t worth it. He could have chosen not to create the world and fill it with beings that would bear His image and carry the imprint of His love. He could have chosen to walk away before ever writing the first word of humanity’s story. But He didn’t.

Even then, in the before of all things, God knew us, He loved us, and He had a plan in place to rescue us.

Sometimes I imagine what that moment could have been like. As God the Father looked down through the years, through the horrors that sin would bring upon His creation. As He felt the sting of rejection and the rending pain of watching His precious children walk away from Him. As He experienced the crushing anguish that would pierce the souls of those He loved. Can you see Him turn, heart breaking, to His Son and ask “Will you go? Will you save them? Will you be the sacrifice to bring them back into the fellowship of our Love? Will you take their place so that they can be whole again?” Can you hear Jesus answer “I will go.”?

He would put on flesh and come to dwell with us, to reveal His heart in the life He lived, and to die to become the bridge reuniting us with our Creator. And as the Spirit hovered expectantly, God said…

“Let there be Light!”

And light flooded the universe, forever an echo of His Love, a reminder that He had a plan in place to defeat the darkness, to give us Hope, and a reflection of the Light of the world Who would come. Light set in motion the six days of creation that would culminate in His crowning masterpiece. Man formed from the dust by His own hands. Into whom He would breathe His breath, His life, His essence. This is the Love that calls to us now. Reminding us that in the beginning, before man drew His first breath, Redemption had already been set in motion.

Every story has a beginning – ours began with Love.

This week take some time to meditate on the Cross in light of this truth. And in the words of the Apostle Paul,

Until next time…