When you see a newborn child after cooing over her for a bit you will stick out your pinkie finger. The infant will grasp the finger with her tiny hand. You will say something like, “Look how strong she is.” This first grasp of a baby is not the last. You might think that being a human being is all about grasping — grasping after food, after learning, after recognition, after success, after health, after love. We as a species want more, want something we don’t yet have so we try to grab on and hold it. Jesus, who was fully a human being, teaches us a new way to live. He lived his life by ceasing to grasp after but instead to give unto. Christ Jesus, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself. Jesus was about giving, not getting. He was able to live in this way because he knew, he felt at the core of his existence, that the had all he needed because of God’s unconditional love. The call for us as believers, as followers of Jesus, is to come to the same profound realization in our lives. We don’t need to grasp anything else because what we have already is better. God simply loves us and invites us to share divine life. Jesus on the cross continued to trust in God’s love. We pick up our cross once we realize that there isn’t anything in life, even the worst of things, that can separate us from the love of God we possess in Christ Jesus. That’s the meaning of salvation. God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life…. that the world might be saved through him.
