A King and His Love

Lately, I've come to the realization that there's really only one thing I need to pray for...

I've been asking Yeshua to teach me how to love in the way that He loves us.

This is no small task... I can't comprehend His kind of love.  The closest thing I can come up with is found in the way that I try to love my children.  The problem is, I constantly fail in that area... I can't even do that right sometimes!  

The way that our Father loves His children is beyond incomprehensible to me.  I do not know how to love like that... not even close.  Just trying to comprehend the differences between His love, and my best, gives me a massive feeling of failure.

First a story...

The kingdom of Eldor lay under a sky the color of tarnished bronze. King Aric had ruled thirty-one years, long enough for the people to forget the sound of his laughter, short enough for his daughter Liora to still remember it.

Liora was seventeen, quick with a bow, quicker with a smile, and the only heir. For months, gold had been vanishing from the treasury—never enough to notice at once, always enough to matter. The council traced the theft to a single set of footprints: small, light, royal.

The law was older than the throne: *Steal from the king, die by the king’s lash.* Forty strokes with the cat-o’-nine-tails, delivered at dawn on the palace altar. No exceptions, not even for blood.

They caught her at midnight. She did not run. The guards bound her wrists, hooded her face, and marched her to the throne room. When the hood came off, the high priest’s voice cracked like thin ice.

“My lord… it is the princess.”

Liora’s eyes were dry. She had spent the gold on silks, on horses, on nights she thought no one would miss. Aric stared at his daughter as if seeing her for the first time. Then he dismissed the court with a gesture so small it felt like surrender.

Alone, he said, “I will take the lashes.”

She laughed—one sharp, broken sound. “Father, the law names the thief.”

“The law names *royal blood,*” he answered. “I am royal. I am blood.”

He spent the night in the armory, trading silk for coarse linen. At dawn he walked to the altar where Liora already stood bound between the pillars. The executioner—a man who had served Aric since boyhood—lifted the whip and hesitated.

Aric stepped forward, laid his body over his daughter’s, and spoke so only she and the executioner could hear.

“Begin.”

The first lash split the air. Leather knots bit flesh. Aric did not flinch. Between strokes he whispered against her ear, “I love you...”

By the tenth, blood soaked the linen. By the twentieth, his voice was a rasp. At thirty-nine, he sagged against the ropes that held them both. The final lash fell; the whip dropped from a trembling hand.

Silence.

Then the king slid to the stone, breath rattling. Liora knelt, cradling his head. His eyes found hers, clear to the end.

“Live better,” he said, and died.

The treasury was never robbed again. Liora ruled fifty years. Every spring, on the anniversary, she climbed the altar alone. She laid one white flower where her father’s blood had dried black, and spoke the same words to the sky:

“My debt was paid by your love. You bore my death so I could live.”

That is how the kingdom learned what love is: not a feeling, but a body broken between a child and the consequence she earned.

I'm still wrapping my head around the extreme sacrifice that Yeshua took just to be born a man.  He existed supreme with Yahweh in a glorified state since before the beginning of this universe.  In an environment not constricted with "time", not polluted with sin, etc..  Yeshua wasn't bound by the limitations of our human bodies or by a realm trapped in time.  He had never been separated from Father Yahweh at any point in His existence... never!

Yet... He chose to be born into these rags that we refer to as our human bodily shells.  Separated from His Father for the first time, the Creator became the created as a defenseless babe.  He became a toddler, then a teenager, and grew into adulthood.  He experienced hunger, thirst, pain, tiredness, frustration, all flesh related callings that we experience.  He had to live through everything on this earth that we face... in this human flesh suit.  The God and Creator of all that exists became man... He came from Glory and left it behind... because of love.

Not only that but... then - to be mocked, spit upon, punched and kicked, a helmet of thorns rammed down upon His head, His beard ripped out of His face, beaten to the point of exposed ribs, and bone from torn flesh, nailed to a tree and left to die the most humiliating death sentence of that time... crucifixion - like a common thief.

He was treated this way by the ones He created.  He could've said the word and  the legions of angels, who were standing by, would have destroyed all of us and the earth to rescue Him. 

He didn't call on them...  what did He say?  After all of the above, what did He say?

"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

Are you kidding me?!  Are you kidding me?!!!  No... I do not understand that kind of love.  I don't get it!  I cannot comprehend!  I would do anything for my children, including death, but that is still not the same as His love and His Sacrifice... His Passion!  He is our Father - we are His children.  I'm trying to comprehend, believe me, but I may never fully understand until I'm with my Savior.  Until then, I'll keep asking Him to help me understand.   

I want to love others with THAT kind of love and it seems impossible for me.  Even though we're told "all things are possible through Christ" this one seems like the most important, and for me - unreachable goal.  The more I learn about Him, the more I realize just how little I know about Him.  

Please, Lord Yeshua, continue teaching me how to love others as You love me.