I am not a crier. Not usually anyway. A few times a year, during my most stressful weeks, I might break down and cry for a few minutes. Every once in a while, Micah and I will get into a fight that will cause me to shed a few tears, but even that is rare. I never cry during movies or when reading books. Sometimes I will get teary-eyed for a second at the end of a Parenthood episode {because who doesn't?}, but I never actually cry. Right now there is a baby the size of an avocado in my womb. It's in there kicking and punching and fluttering all around. Its heart beats about 150 times per minute, and, as of this week, that same tiny heart pumps about 25 quarts of blood each day. And this is the type of thing that makes me cry. Not the baby itself. Not the experience of pregnancy. Not even the crazy hormones that are supposedly raging through my body right now. {I think I've only had one solid hormonal pregnancy cry in the past 16 weeks.} What makes me cry is God's goodness. His love and His grace bring tears to my eyes. Sometimes, when I sit quietly for a moment and try to fathom God's love for me, for His children, for this world, it shakes my soul and I feel the tears start to well up. How can such a huge and holy God love me so much? And on Good Friday, I think about how amazing it is that God wrapped himself in flesh and came to this earth to die... to die a horrible and undeserved death... for sinners like me. The fact that Jesus chose to come down from heaven and live among us brings tears unlike any episode of Parenthood ever could. Thousands of years ago, God chose a woman like me... younger than me even... and He planted a seed in her womb. And that seed was Jesus. Fully God and fully man. And Jesus grew just like this child now grows inside me... from a sesame seed to a kumquat, into a lemon, an apple, an avocado .. and finally into a tiny babe... pushed from a womb to save the world. And He walked on this earth, experiencing all the beauty and all the ugliness this waiting-to-be-redeemed world has to offer. He had a father, mother, brothers and sisters. He had friends, and He had many enemies. He knew the value of hard work. He knew the cost of serving others. He felt weariness, pain, and stress like all humans do. And yet He was obedient in it all. He was never bitter about humbling himself... the God of the Universe never once changed his mind or his heart about wrapping himself up as a sesame seed in the womb, never doubted the Father's plan when He was a poor manual laborer in a tiny town, never looked back when he served the sick, hungry, and hopeless all day long with no break for a meal or for sleep. And He let his persecutors hang him up on a cross for wrongs He had never committed. In what looked like the greatest moment of defeat and weakness in the history of the earth, Jesus Christ conquered death and sin in the greatest victory this world has ever seen. And I hope you see it. I hope God opens your eyes to the wonder and glory of a loving Son who would come to die and would conquer death and live again. And when you see it, I pray it's through teary, humble, joyful eyes. ...though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Philippians 2:6-11 ... Read more