We had a strange Easter this year. Both of my girls were home sick and so pretty dresses were left hanging in the closet, no Easter musical was heard, no passion play seen, no colored eggs were searched for, no fancy meal was consumed, no extended family to be hung out with, and no cute pics titled Easter 2013 to be posted or developed.

As the Children’s Ministry Director, I went to Easter Sunday alone in my blue jeans and t-shirt while Dad stayed home to take care of the girls. I spent the morning at Church playing with the babies and getting lots of love hugs from my beautiful little ones. I was the last one to leave the church, as I took poopy diapers to the dumpster and picked up some Chinese take-out on the way home.

I got home and me and my husband and our girls ate together and then we piled up. We played Apples to Apples. My husband taught the girls how to build a house of cards and a few card tricks to astound their friends. We took temperatures to see whose was less. Our Bekah, who is usually the one sick, was doing the happy dance all day, and singing “I’m healthier than you!” every time the thermometer revealed that her temp was actually lower than our Shelby’s.

Then we piled up one last time to watch “The Bible”

My husband and I cried all the way through it…

It never ceases to amaze me that God would choose to save the likes of us. I look at the depths of our depravity, the callousness of our cruelty, the ability of our abusiveness toward one another… and I cannot fathom why He would see any reason to not just leave us to ourselves to destroy one another.

Why on earth would He want to save us?

How on earth can He look at us with such love?

Yet He did. ON EARTH. On earth, not from a distant heaven, but on earth… up close and personal, He still looked at us with oh so great love.

I want to meet Simon of Cyrene.

I want to meet the man who was able to see into the eyes of our Savior as He went to the hill that would display His death. I want to meet the man. Oh how I do hope that He was a man who strengthened the Lord as he helped Him carry His cross. Oh how I hope he was a man that spoke kindness to the Lord and encouraged Him as the History Channel series depicted. Oh how I hope that he was a man who loved the Lord and did not curse Him as he walked so closely with Him, His blood spilling over on to him as they walked up that hill to the Lord’s death…

I remember when my sister had her wreck and the doctors gave me her blood covered jewelry and I held her blood covered hands and stroked her blood covered face and hair as I sung to her and prayed with her… hoping she could hear me. I wore her rings and I kept her blood on me. I just could not wash it off until I knew she would live.

I wonder if Simon of Cyrene felt the same way about the blood of Christ that had to cover him and his garments…

Then I watched as Mary bathed the body of her Son. I watched as Nicodemus and Joseph sang over His body… and I thought as I watched her gently wash the stains of hate and betrayal and death away from his body… this is how we are to treat His body today.

His body is the church. We the believers. We are His body. How do we treat one another? How we treat one another is how we are treating His body. Every lash into His skin was for one of us. Every blow to His back was for our sin. Every kick to His side was for our transgression. Each swing of the hammer that nailed Him to the cross was for our rebellion. Every single one.

When someone comes to Him and believes in Him… truly believes… they accept that. Then the weight of that falls on them… and when it’s real, really believed, it is so very hard to bare.

Those who believe are to take that one who has just realized the weight of it all and we are begin to care for that stripe, that blow, that kick, that hammer swing to the body. We are to begin washing them with the water of the Word… and applying healing salt to the wounds and strengthening them so that they might go and do the same to the parts of His body that they will have in their reach.

Are you caring for His body?

So, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience; bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you.

Colossians 3:12-13

He cried out “It is finished” but it wasn’t over… It was finished to begin… a brand new beginning. The old is finished but the new had just begun.