Four-letter Words: N

This is Good Friday.  We kicked off the four-letter word series last week with "L" for "love."  To do this alphabetically, today's post should be "A."  I am unpredictable, however, and we are skipping to the first letter in the second half of the alphabet, "n," and the word is:

nail.

Jesus died the cruelest and most insulting death we can imagine.  We observe Good Friday in commemoration of the sacrifice of His own life to atone for our sins.  He died for us that we might live.

The nails were driven through His hands and feet to hold him to the rood.  Yet it was not the nails that held Him there, but rather His unimaginable love for us that forced him to give His life.  Make no mistake.  His life was not taken from Him, He gave his life.  He cried to the Father, "Not my will, but Thine be done."  He gave all in the will, not of self, but of the Father.

I am thinking as I worship this morning of the thud of the mallet as the nails were driven, the agony of  my Lord, Creator of all things, as he suffocated there on that hill we call Calvary.

The greatest Love of all.