Today I'm linking up to Lisa-Jo aka gypsy mama, who chooses a topic every Friday and writes for five minutes.
Only five minutes.
And the rule is that whatever she writes about in that five minutes is what she posts. No editing her thoughts.
Today, her topic choice is "The hard love…"
So I'm going to set the timer, write some thoughts, and then I'm going to stop.
Ready? Set. Go.
::
My Grandpa Gerald died this week. He's my dad's dad and no one told him during the past nine months that Dad went ahead of him to get heaven ready. And when Grandpa died I thought, "I hope Jesus is ok with swearing in heaven."
There are a couple reasons for that random thought. One, because I'm not sure I ever had a conversation with Grandpa when he didn't swear at some point [I get that trait from him :)]. And two, because I'm sure he saw Dad standing there waiting for him and said, "Mike, what in the hell are you doing here?"
What does that have to do with the prompt "the hard love"? Because without today, without Good Friday, there would be no meeting of the men I love in heaven.
Without today, without that brutal sacrifice born out of hard love for us, we would be flailing in the dark and alone in death.
Because no matter how much God loved His Son, he took the hard love instead of the easy for each one of us. He could have turned away and said it was too much. Most fathers would have, but He loved us as a Father, too. So He chose hard love for His son because of His love for you and me.
And no matter how scared Jesus was in that garden – scared enough that blood actually sweat from His pores – He took the hard love, the hard pain and the hard walk with that cross and let them put nails in His hands.
He did that for us. So my dad and my grandpa could laugh and hug and reminisce and even swear in heaven.
Jesus took every cruel word. Every cruel strap of the whip. Every fall and every stumble and every sweat bead of pain. He took the hard as a human man because He loved us.
Hard.