Where is my Hope?
If you ask me what I find the most relatable part of the Easter Story, I think I might always say, the point where the Father abandons Jesus on the cross. As someone who’s dad left her, it always seems to cut deep. In Jesus’ weakest moment, when He was vulnerable, naked and hanging on a cross- the moment where He needed His dad the most, the Father wasn’t there. To think the Son of the Creator of everything, knows what it is like to have your dad leave, the one person who is supposed to never leave you, seems a weird kind of comfort though.
When people say, surely God can’t know personally, EVERY single feeling or emotion a human can go through, I think about my experience with my dad and remember, Jesus went through the exact same thing, and all because he loved me. My experience has left me broken and damaged and yet Jesus willingly went to the cross, knowing that the Father who had NEVER once left Him, would do exactly that. I don’t know what hurt more, the nails in His hands and feet or His heart shattering at the messiness of it all. But He did it all because He loved me. He knew this world was broken, I was broken, and His world was not meant to be this way. He knew my dad would leave and wanted me to know that His Father could be mine. He wanted me to know the depth of His love, so high and long and wide that He would go to a cross, be abandoned by His Father, all so He could know and love me.
Who would do that? What kind of love is this? I am floored by the heart of God every time I think about the story of Jesus. The moment in history that changed everything. The moment where every little girl whose dad let her down, failed to show up when she needed him, broke her heart with false promises- was redeemed. The moment where Jesus’s heart broke was the moment where my heart had a chance of being whole. Jesus is not only relatable, but He is hope. I may not have an earthly Father who would love me like this, but man, do I have a Father who literally went heaven and earth to show me the kind of affection no one ever did. I have someone who see’s all I have done, all I will do, and still would choose the horrors of the cross every single time. Someone who lavishes grace over me when I deserve nothing but His wrath. I am no longer fatherless, I am saved, known and loved beyond measure by a Father who can’t help but love me. That is just who He is.
Riyah Ramji
My name is Riyah Ramji, I am a final year Philosophy, Ethics and region student at the university of Southampton and I am passionate about sharing Jesus!