Every year we take a short hiatus from our regularly scheduled podcasts (Gospel Rant and The Forgiving Path) to focus on what the death and resurrection of Jesus really mean for us today. What difference does it make to real people living in an increasingly frightening and violent world?

What Jesus did should leave us open-mouthed--with a lack of words. No one else loves us anywhere near that much. We don't love ourselves that much. Such a disproportionate loving will be to a certain degree uncomfortable and unnerving for such undeserving objects of that loving. In fact, the closer we get --by the Holy Spirit's power-- to actually experience even a little of the height, width, length and depth of the adoring gaze of Jesus, the louder that critical inner voice in our head testifies that it is dangerous to believe it as true. This is the normal human inner struggle for we very imperfect, shame-prone, and often unloveable Jesus followers--never more so than during the Easter season when we tend to focus on the shortcomings of the last year.

Jesus' feelings of honor toward us (that's exactly what he expressed on the Cross--among so many other things) at such a great cost to him seems too good to be true. Why? Because it is.

And yet...It is totally true. Enjoy the rant.