Flipping Some Tables.

I recently rolled my ankle while on a skateboard. I was trying to do a kickflip, and let's just say me and the board had a falling out. Well, to put it more accurately, I had a falling down. I landed with my weight on the wrong part of my foot and my ankle was thus stretched past its limits.

It hurt.

So, naturally, I fell on the ground and threw my sliding gloves up in the air out of pain. I covered my face with my hands and moaned and groaned and whined until the pain died down. In short, I made a spectacle. After all, I wanted people to realize I was hurt.

"When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son!” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home."

He was making provisions for His mom then? He was in so much pain. Why did He use one of His last, precious breaths to make a way for a lowly woman to be taken care of? One word:

Love.


In fact, that's its definition. Love is to be so moved for someone else that you no longer care what happens to yourself. Love is to be so consumed with another's well-being that you forfeit your own. Love is to unconditionally, eternally, radically, passionately, and single-mindedly pursue someone's success at the cost of yours.

And Christ's love did not only extend to his mom who loved Him in return.

"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." (Luke 23)

Forgive them? The people who had brutalized his body and beat him to the threshold of death? To all outward appearances, Christ's crucifixion is the epitome of foolishness, but underneath the surface, there lies a shining light of impenetrable, mind-shaking truth - love.

"For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Having reached both ends of realizing that Christ's love applies to the "good people" and the bad, there lies no room in between for you to think that you aren't loved. I don't care what you've done - it'll never be as bad as murdering God Himself.

If our objective is to reflect the God that resides in us, that means loving people despite themselves. That means putting up with their mockery, gossip, back-stabbing, selfishness, hate, indifference, abuse, and torture and loving them through it.

It is a truly table-turning action.

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