A story of a boy named Ezra

This post will be short. The takeaway will not be able to be elaborated on in full. It’s a busy time which is why this post is short. My son was born yesterday. It was an amazing experience. My wife and I already love him deeply. He is an amazing kid. My wife went through a rather long period of labor. There are plenty of things classes and books do not prepare you for as a father and husband. One of those is seeing your wife go through the pain of childbirth. Depending on the pregnancy, childbirth could likely be considered a form of torture. Seeing my wife in the pain she was in tormented me. It was so painful to see her struggle. It was harsh knowing that there was nothing I could do to fix it. I would have taken on the pain for her in a heartbeat, but I couldn’t.

I stood next to my wife as the labor became more intense and the time for pushing began. I became overwhelmed with tears. I wondered how anyone could ever go through this more than once. How could this possibly be worth it? It was a horrible moment of pain. Then out of nowhere, he arrived. In one moment I went from only seeing him as a silhouette on a sonogram to a fully alive child. I turned and saw this child, and heard the most beautiful cry I have ever heard in my life. The tears continued to come, but they were no longer out of pain for my wife. Our son Ezra had arrived, and it was an amazing experience brought about in the midst of pain. It was a mess. He was a mess, but we were drawn to him out of a love that is only ever expressed in those made up fairy tales.

That’s us and God. We are a mess born out of a messy situation into a messy world, but somehow God still loves us in a way that is so intense and profound that we could live for eternity and only barely scratch the surface to it. He saw our pain and was willing and able to take it on himself. he loved us even though we created a situation for ourselves that literally made us unlovable.

It leaves us to wonder what is in us that could possibly make God still love us. The truth is that there is no answer to the question. God loves us so intensely and fights for us so intensely because that is simply who He is. He loves us because that is what He does. We have not earned that love. We have done nothing to make ourselves more lovable. The only things I had known of Ezra’s life here on ths earth up to the point of seeing him were the pain it took to get him here, and a cry of frustration over the lights and noise, but yet I loved him anyway.

This is the story of Ezra, but it is also the story of you and I. For God so loved the world. A world undeserving, often ungrateful, hateful, and wicked. He loved us so much that He gave His only son. Belief in Him means experiencing the intensity of that love for all eternity. It is an eternity where we only begin to scratch the surface.