"It Is Finished" // Faithfully Honest

“It is finished". - John 19:30

These are three of the most powerful words in the Bible to me.

We’re in a very strange time right now. Celebrating Easter from my living room with my husband and watching a church service on TV is not what I envisioned for this year. Although my husband’s company is my favorite, I think back and realize I don’t think I’ve ever had an Easter where I did not go out, go to Church and celebrate the day with loved ones. I feel sad that we can’t do that again this year. But I miss the point of Easter entirely, grieving over the experience I don’t have versus the life I was given through Jesus’s death and resurrection.

According to scholars, God sending Jesus down to Earth to die for our sins was a mission that took Jesus about 30 years old to complete. As someone turning 30 years old this year, I couldn’t imagine living 30 some years, knowing with each passing year about the mission I was sent down to earth for, to know that it was to die for everyone’s sins. To die for people who hated me, persecuted me, lied to me, spat on me, kicked me, betrayed me, beat me, doubted me, abused me, made me carry a heavy load of wood, took that wood, created a cross from it, nailed me to it and let me hang there to die. Yet with each event that led to the cross, I think about the walk they made Jesus go on carrying the cross after they beat him and put thorns on his head. I wonder what Jesus was thinking. I wonder if Jesus thought to himself how he was almost there, just another step forward, and what he thought every time he fell and people laughed at him. I wonder if he thought, I gotta get up and keep moving. I have a mission. It’ll all be worth it, just for them.

I had a difficult time getting up this morning. Truth be told, I’ve been having a difficult time getting up every morning during this pandemic. I am part of a church group chat and as we exchanged Easter greetings this morning, one of my friends sent in a message that hit home for me.

HE got up again! Let’s keep on getting up for that same power that raised Christ from the dead & lives in us!

Despite what Jesus went through here on Earth, he still kept going. He kept going with us in mind. He loved us that much. Right now, there is so much uncertainty in this world with the pandemic and how it continues to affect millions of people in different ways. It’s easy to give up and just call it quits and sit in depression, sit in fear, sit in anxiousness. But I am inspired by Jesus’s strength and his courage to move forward with a bold act of love that the world had never seen before. So today, his resurrection day, I choose to move forward for him, the same way he continued to move forward to the cross for me.

It pains me to think of someone going through pain and suffering and death just for someone like me. And I praise the Lord that he would consider me enough to die so I can spend the rest of eternity with him forever. 

Xo