Lord, show me your Father-heart

I saw Him on the cross. I looked around. I was alone with Him.

I fell to my knees. How can this be? It’s just the two of us. What can I do – He’s nailed to the cross. Wounded, bruised, blood flowing from His head, His hands, His feet, His whole body.

The pain He carried in His body was indescribable – I wanted it to stop.

An unutterable weeping came over me. How can I even keep looking at Him? He is bearing my sins in His own body on that tree.

I hear Him scream, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” God had forsaken His own Son on the cross because He cannot accept sin – “His eyes are too pure” – He is infinitely holy. He couldn’t admit sin into His holy presence.

It broke my heart – my body collapsed – I couldn’t bear the sight of His pain, His suffering, knowing He is doing this for me.

Memories of my life came rushing back in that moment. I am unworthy of His blood, His pain, His suffering. His body was crushed. He was forsaken because of my sin. I should’ve been the one on the cross – I am the one who sinned.

As I wept at the feet of the cross, I cried out to the Father – “Lord, show me Your Father-heart.”

It wasn’t long before I felt someone touching my shoulders. I looked up. It was Him.

In the very moment He forsook His Son, He was with me. I was atoned with the only living, holy, Almighty God. Abba – Father.

He could not be with His Son in that moment. He couldn’t be with His sinless, spotless, blameless Son in that moment, yet, He was with me? Why? I had given Him every reason to look the other way, to spit me out of His mouth, to weigh me in the balances and find me wanting. Yet, while His Son was dying on the cross, He was with me?

“The veil of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.” God was with me because His Son paid for every single sin in the world. My Father could be with me because in that instant I was redeemed – through the blood of Jesus, I am redeemed.

He looked away from His Son. He sacrificed His Son so that I can call Him Abba – Father.

He forsook His Son only for a while, when “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”

Óh how glorious it is to be in the presence of the Lord!