I'm sure you're wondering by now why we do any of this stuff. Most people our age, I'm sure, don't go out to other towns and sacrifice their own time to fix up houses. Do all people our age spend two hours every Sunday night at church? So why do we?
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There was this guy once. He was a carpenter, lived with his parents until he was 30 or so. One day he went out and just started teaching people about God and about faith and about love. He reached out to the poor, the rich, the sick, the healthy, the little guys and the big guys, everyone. He reached out so much, in fact, that the local religious authorities thought he was dirtying his image by associating with the so-called 'unclean.'
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And he wasn't just a teacher. His first recorded miracle was turning water into wine at a feast. He fed 5,000 people on a mountainside, and did it again not long after. He gave sight to the blind, healed lepers, and men who had been paralyzed for ages stood up and danced on their mats. This guy was the real deal.
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This was the kind of guy who, when he walked into a room, everyone knew he was there. He just had that air of authority about him. In fact, there was so much power in his presense that it went beyond the physical. Men possesed by demons felt him coming miles away, and cried out for mercy. People knew that this man had real power - they could be healed just by touching his robe, or just by him speaking.
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Well, the church officials didn't like him. They thought he was going against God, ruining the church's reputation. One of his own followers sold him out, and the priests came to him in the middle of the night with a regiment of soldiers.
"Why do you come armed as if to catch a thief?"
They took him to have a chat with the authorities. The head official wanted no part of this trial. The church and the government are forever battling back and forth, and that's exactly what was happening now. The judge was conflicted - he claimed just before his final ruling that his hands were clean of our hero's blood, that it was the religious leaders who condemned the man, not him.
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And so he made the long and unimaginably painful march up a hill carrying the timbers for his own execution. He was nailed to two posts tied together in the shape of a cross, and hung there - for you. He spoke only 3 things hanging on the cross.
"Father, forgive them - they know not what they do."
"My God, my God! Why have you forsaken me?!"
"... it is finished."
The last is the most important of the three. The words he spoke then have been translated into English, but the original words were used to bind legal contracts. That's exactly what he did - he made a contract between us and God to save us all.
Because you see, he did all of this so that we could be saved. He loved us so much, without us even knowing Him, that he sacrificed himself to bridge the gap between us and God. "How?" you ask. "How could one man save the world just by dying? Wouldn't he have been more effective if he stuck around and taught the world?"
No, actually - he had everything planned out so that this would happen. In the old days, when one of God's people came to worship they brought an animal sacrifice - only the purest of the flock would do. Likewise did he come to save us, because no normal guy could have done it. The person had to be pure.
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His name was Jesus Christ. He came looking ahead. He lived looking to God. And he died thinking of you.
The greatest part is, it's not over. Think this life is all there is? Think again - there's forever after to spend. When the whole world has passed away, where will you be?
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That's why we do what we do. He gave everything for us - it's the least we can do to give everything back to him.
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