Would you take on the unusual assignment?: The Best of All Love Stories
The love story I’m about to share is limited by my imagination only. To me, this is the best of all love stories ever told.
I can imagine Jesus, The Lord God and the Holy Spirit in heaven one day and the conversation begins to unfold between God and Jesus.
God tells Jesus….
I need you to go on an assignment. The assignment requires you to put on an extremely limiting outfit. To put on this garment, you will be borne through a woman who has never had sex with a man. Some will be elated by your birth; others will seek to destroy you. You will be like a child prodigy, knowing things you shouldn’t know. You will be able to teach teachers because of your knowledge. You'll grow and become a teenager. From a teenager, you’ll grow more and become a young man.
Then one day in your early thirties, you will know it's time. Time for the assignment to be conducted in the limited outfit you will wear. In the assignment, you will heal people. You will perform physics-defying miracles. You will make friends, and you will make followers. Your talks will fascinate and convict many while stirring dangerous envy in others. People will know about you because of a man named John, who will be your cousin. Because of him, they will know that something is different about you. You will tell your closest friends exactly why you are different –you are my son. You will prepare them for a time when you will no longer be with them. You will become so popular that people will celebrate you as if you are some football player who's won the game of games. Life by humanity's standards will seem perfect because people will believe you are their champion. But there's more.
Because many of those who cheered you on one day will suddenly boo you the next. Some will lie to get you arrested. And when given a chance to free you, an innocent man, they will choose a known criminal instead. They will know his background is nothing like yours. They will know he has hurt many people. Yet still, they will request his freedom and your imprisonment. After this, it will get extremely ugly. Yes, there's more.
Jealousy. Duty. Boredom. One, all, and more of these may be the reasons for the torture you will experience. You will be beaten with fists and with tools. One of them will be a cruelly made whip meant to rip the flesh from your back. You will be spit on. You'll be forced to wear a crown of thorns. You know how sometimes people jump when they prick a single finger with a thorn and run to the first aid kit? You will have multiple thorns pressed into your scalp. On top of all this, they will mock you. In addition to delivering great physical pain to you, they will make fun of you. They will stand you in the center of their crowd and call you terrible names. But there is more.
After this, they will then perform their legal process for convicted criminals. You won’t be a criminal, but they won't care. You will be treated as one. They will attach you to a crossbeam of wood. Your hands will be nailed to the horizontal part of the cross beam. Your feet will be nailed to the vertical part. Blood will pour from these wounds like running water. The intention of such a “clever” punishment is to have you slowly die by suffocation as the weight of your body crushes your lungs. This may take days for some, but this part won't last too long for you. After you die, they will confirm your death by pushing a spear into your side, and more blood will come out. But that is not the end of the assignment. There is more.
In death, you will need to do the worst of the worst. Everything before this moment will be nothing compared to what happens next. I will need to leave you. I won't be able to look at you. You will die alone, carrying the ugliest sins of the world upon your body. You will die for the murders, the abuses, the lies, the hatreds, the selfish desires, the unfairness and more; that which existed before you and will exist after you leave the world will become part of you at the moment of death. This must be done because your assignment is to be the only sacrifice that can open a door between me and the people of the world. When they believe in you and live according to your principles they will please me, and I will want them close. In this assignment, you will overcome physical death because you will get out of the grave they create for you. And you will also overcome spiritual death. In you, people will find freedom from hopelessness, darkness, confusion, dysfunction acting like it's normal. etc. You will overcome it all. But there will be more.
Because you will return home. You'll come back here to me, where you will devote your time to appealing for the people. Yet, after all, you have done, they will continue to disobey me and do whatever they want. But when they choose to turn away from disobedience and choose to believe and live for you in obedience, it will be wonderful. Basically, my son, I am asking you to give up yourself for people who would not do the same for you. I'm asking you to give up yourself for people not yet born. I'm asking you to suffer for my creation.
I can imagine at the end of sharing the spectacular details of the assignment, Jesus responded like this…
My answer is yes. I’ll do it because no greater love is there but to give my life for the world.
This is the best and the only love story that matters. It is the best of all love stories past, present, and future. That's not disregarding or putting down my love for my husband or my parents, my siblings or my friends. It doesn’t discount any of the love I share with them. It’s my duty and my privilege to love these people. But the best love story is the one where I choose to love Jesus because he first loved me.