You know about those days. Where getting out of bed seems like climbing Mount Everest. You don’t want to face the pain. You don’t want to face your life. Maybe you don’t want to face yourself. You try desperately to pull something out of your soul, something that will fill you. Nothing comes. It’s dry. But you’re drowning all the same.
You can drown in two inches of water. But those days, they feel like an ocean’s consumed you. On those days you can’t breathe. You’re in way over your head.
So those days require something more---more than just air to breathe. You need something solid. Something you can hold onto. You need to open your arms and feel the presence of something deep surround you.
And you have it. He gave it. He knows what it feels like to drown---in his own blood and water. To gasp for air. To be beaten beyond recognition. He shows you every time you look up. Every time you see a cross.
How do you make it on those days? By remembering. By inviting someone into the mess. Right into the broken and empty places of your soul. You tell the story of your pain. You tell someone ----you’re just one step away from drowning ----and you ask for what you need.
The needing is OK. And one thing is for sure; you need someone to come to your rescue. And someone did. You can feel it every time you put your hand on a nail. The piercing. He knows what it feels like. He took it into his own body. It was about carrying the weight of the world on his nail scared hands and feet, so that you and I don’t have to.
If you want to make it on those days, the ones where you feel the pull of the current so strong underneath you that it knocks you down. You have to let the arms of mercy receive you, comfort you, support you, and yes, carry you.
That’s when he pours life into those broken and empty places and fills you. For one more day. You can make it because of what he did. The Father sends the only Son to be broken for your remembering. The remembering is what keeps you from drowning. The remembering is what keeps your heart alive.
The God man says, “It is finished.” Nothing else is necessary. This love was costly. I did it for you. For all those times when you feel like you’re drowning. For all those thin and worn places in your soul that make you feel so vulnerable. I did it so that you would remember.
I did it so that you would know. I did it so that there would never be any doubt in your heart. I gave my only son, so that when you lost something precious, you’d know that I would understand your pain. I did it so that when you felt abandoned, rejected, unloved and all alone, you would remember.
On those days, remember that I loved you to death.