It was like, “so there’s this guy I’ve never met, who 2000 years ago died for me. That somehow washes away my sins. And now I get to go to heaven.” Basically the good news was that there’s a way out of hell. To be honest, the good news for me was never eternity in heaven, but more about the avoidance of hell. Because for me, I think I’d have rather just died and been done. Being just done always sounded better than eternity to me, but as I understood it, I had to make a choice between heaven and hell, so heaven was the better choice. Once making that choice to go to heaven instead of hell, there are now some things to do. Now I should obey Jesus, go to church, pray, do Bible studies, and become more spiritual. Oh, and I’m also supposed to tell others about this. But telling others is not so easy when the “Good News” doesn’t actually seem like too good of news to me when I’m honest with myself. I’m supposed to give up my life….I’m supposed to carry my cross…..all because of what He’s done for me? That didn’t make sense to me. If Jesus died for me and carried a cross for me, it didn’t make any sense to me that I should have to carry a cross around since He supposedly did it for me. What kind of gift is it to say “you need to have this misery of a cross on your back as my gift to you. I did it, so now you have to do it”. It made no sense to me how this was good news and therefore there was really no desire to share it. The only way I understood the “good news” was that I was “saved” into heaven. But spending an eternity with this guy I didn’t actually really know or trust didn’t bring floods of joy spilling over into the lives of others. I didn’t really know I felt this way at the time, I was blind to most of this. Looking back, I can see how these were my thoughts, but they were more subconscious than they were conscious.

Aha! So Jesus didn’t die because I’ve been such a bad boy and God the Father needed someone to take out His anger on. He died because I was considered worth it! Love lays down it’s life for another. God is love and I am that other. That’s what someone who loves perfectly does. It’s in His nature to lay down His own life so that we might live. It’s in His nature to be scorned and shamed and beaten and murdered and to become sin if He could just give us life, righteousness, and freedom from sin and shame. He loves completely unselfishly. We’ve never experienced anything like it. We’ve never met anyone so good and so for us. The cross was the revealing of His love and of our value. Even while we hated him and hung him, he was saying “Forgive them (the people hanging me and spitting on me) because they don’t actually understand what they are doing”. The cross was the revelation that we could trust Him. There was nothing He was holding back from us. There is no fish hook hiding in the worm. He loves at His expense, not ours. So I don’t get my ticket to heaven and then have to pay for it by carrying around a cross. I only carry my cross when I am so fully overflowing with love and having every need met in Him that I take on that same nature of love and give up my own life for another. I don’t grit my teeth and carry my cross of misery. I ache with compassion for those who are hurting to the point where I am willing to give up my own life for their good. That is carrying my cross. It becomes a privilege to carry a cross when I have not a single selfish thought. You don’t have selfish thoughts when you’re so fulfilled that you have no capacity or need to focus on your lack or your need. It frees you to turn your focus to others and “pour yourself out like a drink offering”. Do I do this all the time? No, far from it. Why? Because my pride still gets in the way of receiving the fullness of HIs love and affirmation and approval and adoration. I don’t yet know how to allow myself to be so fulfilled and loved to the point of not focusing on myself anymore. But I’m learning. The more I receive, the more I can see how eternity might not be such a grind. It used to be called “the good news”; now it is actually good news.  And now I’m really looking forward to heaven. I think when we meet “face to face”, I’ll be receiving in full and I’ll immediately want to live forever without a single reservation.