I was about to exit the sanctuary after the Easter event was over when a woman came running up to me in a frenzy, “Don’t leave without your gift!” Then she handed it to me and scurried off to catch another woman who had apparently forgotten hers too. Since the mood for the women-only event was a warm, cozy and intimate time of celebrating Jesus’ life, I expected the usual gift of a nice-smelling candle or hand-crafted journal. Instead, I held in my hand something I had never received before in my life: a rusty old nail.
I love Easter because it’s a time of remembering what Jesus did on the cross so that we could enjoy abundant and eternal life with God. We know that He had to die a brutal death on the cross, but often it seems we focus our remembrance on the good that came from it.
But when that nail hit my hand, a deep revelation simultaneously hit my heart anew: Jesus suffered. Terribly.
I walked out to my car and sat there unable to move. As I gripped the rough edges of the nail, I couldn’t get the thought out of my mind, this nail pierced through His body.
Jesus’ death was no longer a testimony found in the Gospel accounts that I could proclaim to strangers in the street, but it was something I was holding onto. A tangible thing. I even traced the center of my palm with its pointed tip, imagining what it might have been like, felt like, tasted like to be Him– naked and nailed to that wooden cross. Before I knew it, tears were flowing down my face. Compassion and empathy welled up in my heart. There I sat in the empty parking lot alone, weeping for the man, Jesus.
When was the last time you wept for Jesus?
I couldn’t remember the last time I had, but something about it felt good. Allowing ourselves to connect emotionally with the events that make up the foundation of our faith can be a powerful thing. It makes way for the knowledge stored up in our heads to rush like a waterfall to the softened, vulnerable walls of our hearts. It’s not emotionalism. It’s going from knowing about God to experiencing Him personally.
Have you experienced God personally in the last week? Month? Year? Decade? It’s never too late. The Author and Creator of our souls is waiting with open arms just around the corner of your life to blow your mind with a greater reality of Him. Do you believe it?
Make it a point to take some time in the next couple weeks leading up to Easter to pause, be still and reflect not just on the power and resurrection of Jesus, but on His suffering that made it all possible. Let’s be like Paul, who said,
“I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.”
Philippians 3:10-11
When we participate in His suffering by remembering–really remembering– and soaking in the reality of what He did for us on the cross and by enduring suffering in our own lives for His sake, we will experience His abiding presence in a much deeper, more intimate way. Jesus Himself says, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10).
Nothing like a rusty old nail to let the reality of that Truth sink in.