Loving A Son

by Mike Gibson

Lord, help me to forever appreciate the love shown in your sacrifice.

It was a Tuesday morning in April, at 9:20, and I was rocking my new son in the old wooden chair located in the corner of the hospital nursery.

I was having my first experience with loving a son.

Prying open his lids against the goop they had rubbed into his tiny eyes, he looked at me. The words came clearly and distinctly into my mind as our eyes met. Echoes of this statement will forever inhabit the memory of that day.

“This is my son in whom I am well pleased.”

So powerful was the impact of that message that my normally serene facade broke into a brimming of tears.

This is my son. I have only held him for a few minutes but already I am smitten.

We have never gone hiking together.

No Bible stories have yet been shared.

All deep conversations are still somewhere in the future.

But already I am able to say, “This is my son. I am pleased with him. He has my heart.”

Now I realize more fully what God gave up for me.

When he made that proclamation over the river Jordan, what was thought to be thunder was actually the heart of God spilling into human words. When he said, “This is my Son, in whom I am well pleased,” it was not an emotion based on just a few minutes of experience. The Father and the Son had been together from the foundations of eternity. The relationship was filled with shared experiences, shared dreams, and shared love. Never had the Son let the Father down, and never had the Father left his Love.

This is my Son . . .

The foreshadowing of heartbreak was lost on me until Tuesday morning. The intensity of a love that would lay down his only Son was never fully appreciated until that instant.

God gave up his little boy for me.

Giving him my life in return for that? What a pitiful offering!

But, alas, it is all I have.

So, Lord, here it is.

Worthless compared with what you gave up.

Minute compared with your love.

Here it is.

And, Lord . . . thank you for my son.