This is an updated post from the archives. I though it was appropriate as we prepare for Holy Week.

I once held the hands of a rape victim while we sat in a hospital waiting room. We spoke different languages, but I could read her story in her two black overflowing pools. They spoke volumes, without a word being spoken.

I’ve sat with parents in court while they watched their child brought forward to speak to the judge. They saw their child’s hands chained. Their striped clothing was a glaring reminder of where their child had just been. We talked of their disappointment, confusion and sadness.

I’ve listened to women recount stories of their spouse’s rage. They trembled in fear, visibly shaken as they talked. Their eyes looked off into the distance, seeing memories they wish they could forget. We took photos of their wounds and bruises and kept them safe.

I’ve had a child talk to me about finding his mother dead, by her very own hand. Little by little, we talked about the lasting horror, bitterness, and pain.

Over the years, I’ve heard countless stories of pain, abuse, loss, and fear. Many caused my eyes to burn with unshed tears. Some mirrored my own pains. And each one moved me to compassion.

But the story that moves me most is the one story that all the others point to. It’s a story of pain that was written to heal our pain. It’s a story of loss that was written so that we might gain.

It’s the story of Easter.

This next week, we celebrate how God Himself stepped into the story of redemption, becoming man and living in this world of sin and sorrow. He joined us in our pain, experiencing it for Himself: sorrow, temptation, despair, humiliation, rejection, torture and death. He penned a story of healing in blood-His own blood. As Tim Keller has written, “God takes our misery and suffering so seriously that he was willing to take it on himself.”

God knows each of our stories. He knows each and every ache and sorrow. He hears the deepest cries of our heart. The story of Easter is God’s response to the stories of pain that we all share.

The wonder of it all pierces my heart; God becoming man and dying for me?

My mind cannot comprehend it-a holy, perfect God lowering Himself into the mess of my life. All the tears I’ve cried, He’s caught each and every one. He’s taken my story of brokenness and written in His own prose of grace. He became broken so that I would be made whole. He died so that I might live.

The story of Easter begins with death but ends at resurrection. And it’s because of Jesus’ resurrection on that first Easter morning that we have been freed from the chains of eternal death. And one day, we will enter the next chapter of that endless story where words like pain, sorrow and brokenness don’t exist and instead there is only happiness and joy.

“But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.” The Last Battle, C.S. Lewis

But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed. Isaiah 53:5

 

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