By Shirley Wiggins
Even if you’ve never actually hugged a cactus, you can
imagine what fun it would be, can’t you?
I’m not talking about a light, barely touching hug, but, a pull up tight
and close cause I love you kind of hug.
Think about that: how much love
would it take to hug a cactus up close and personal?! I’m thinking a lot of love – what about you?!
If life is anything, I’ve found it to be full of
multi-colored experiences: some large
and small, fun and pretty, some scary and ugly, a really mixed up bag of tricks
and treats, for sure.
Life experiences can range all the way from the reasonably
expected, through the totally out-of-the-blue and extraordinarily unimaginable.
One of the reasons for that, I think, is due to the uniqueness
of people. “Unique” is the polite word
for quirky, strange, peculiar, different, or just downright difficult personalities that come encased in human skin.
God is delightful, isn’t He?
The Bible says He fashioned each heart “individually.” That surely means that while we humans share
many characteristics, we each remain our own individual and “unique” self.
Now, I don’t know about you, but in my lifetime, I have
encountered some very unique individuals!
And, let me hasten to add (before someone who knows me does it!), that
all these folks I have encountered have encountered the queen of unique: me! J
So, having said that, may I ask you a question? Do you now know, or have you ever been associated
with, or perhaps even related to, one of these folks that are so unique that
just to be in relationship with them is a bit like trying to hug a cactus?
You have to be very careful how you approach them, what you
say and how you say it, or else they break out in thorns! And, when the cacti spines are in full bloom
you know you are walking on egg shells!
And, isn’t God delightful?
He actually expects us to love these folks! To be kind and patient and loving with them
even when their thorns puncture our own sensitive, yet cacti-spine-filled skins
too!
Of course, the great thing about this is that He also
expects them to be kind, patient, and loving with us, too!
So, why don’t we humans try to have a little more love in
our hearts for those of us who are as unique as me?
Please forgive me for hurting you, and I will work at
forgiving you for hurting me. You
probably only accidently hurt me when I accidently bumped into you and pricked
you with one of the million little cacti-spines protruding from my sensitive
little sting-ray-type skin.
Let’s all just love one another because God loves each and
every one of us!
Isn’t God delightful?
He is God. He is the God of
love. He invented love and then He just
poured it all out all over all of us.
“…God’s love has been poured out into
our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” (Romans
5:5b.)
God demonstrated His own love toward us in such a personal
and proof-positive way:
“You
see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the
ungodly. … But God demonstrates His own
love for us in this: while we were still
sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans
5:6,8.)
This was no easy death.
Not for Christ, nor for God, His Father.
It was unimaginably painful in every way. The anguish of the cross is soaked in blood. The blood that was required to be poured out
(shed) for the payment of sins:
death-blood. The penalty for sin
is death and not one sacrifice would do except the shed blood of the sinless
One: Jesus Christ.
He paid the price, He died the death that we might go free
from the penalty of our sins.
There was no other way, there was no other One, and so, when
Jesus asked if there could be another way, He knew the answer was no, and so He
told His Father: “Father, if You are willing, take
this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done. An angel from heaven
appeared to Him and strengthened Him.” (Luke
22:42-43.)
The death was a death of love, a death of penalty-paying of
the price. He came to die and die He
did: His mission fulfilled, He died with
a prayer on His lips for those for whom He died – for us, for the humans whom
God has fashioned with individual hearts, with a capacity to know and love each
other, to know Him and love Him, if one would only choose to do so.
“Jesus
said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke
23:34.)
“It
was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the
afternoon, for the sun stopped shining.
And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Jesus called out with a
loud voice, “Father, into Your hands, I commit My spirit.” When He had said
this, He breathed His last.” (Luke 23:44-46.)
He breathed His last breath on earth. He was buried, the sacrifice was
finished. So was death.
“On
the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices
they had prepared and went to the tomb.
They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered,
they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.” (Luke 24:1-3.)
No, the women did not find the dead body of Jesus Christ,
for He had risen from the dead.
Read the beautiful and fact-filled account of all that
happened on earth as Jesus sent word by the women to His disciples of what to
do next and where to meet Him when. For,
He was going back into heaven until the time when He will come back to earth
and gather the redeemed ones home to heaven to be with Him once for all time.
Read the Bible. Don’t
rely on someone else’s account of the glorious story of God: Read the Bible for yourself and encounter the
Living God of the Living Son of Man, the Savior of all who will receive Him as
such¹. (See John
1:1-18.)
The Bible is the
story of the Word God has sent to us to tell us what to do now, what to do next
and where to meet Him when. You won’t
know what to do, how to do it, or where to meet Him, if you don’t know Him and read
His Word.
“Dear friends, let us love one another, for
love comes from God. Everyone who loves
has been born of God and knows God.
Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed His love among
us: He sent His one and only Son into
the world that we might live through Him.
This is love: not that we loved
God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our
sins. Dear friends, since God so loved
us, we also ought to love one another.
No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and
His love is made complete in us.” (1
John 4:7-12.)
“Therefore,
dear friends, since you have been forewarned, be on your guard so that you may
not be carried away by the error of the lawless and fall from your secure
position.
But
grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. To Him be glory both now and forever! Amen.” (2
Peter 3:17-18.)
Love is the story. We
are the cacti. God is the God of love
and He hugs us closely and tightly and still whispers into eternity, “I love
you.”
¹ To be a child of God, you must first have a relationship with
Christ.
John 3:16 says:
“God
so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever
believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
If you have never accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord of
your life, you are invited to pray a
simple prayer confessing your sin and asking Jesus to cleanse you of that
sin. If
you repent and turn from your sin to Christ, and “confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe that God raised Him
from the dead, you will be saved”. (Romans 10:9)
If you have just prayed to receive Christ, tell someone and go to
church!
