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One Easter when I was a little girl of about three, while outside in the garden scavenging for chocolate eggs, I found a book my parents had hidden in the foliage. Most people might be familiar with it; a popular children’s book titled “Guess How Much I love You” by Sam McBratney. It follows Little and Big Nutbrown Hare as they find different things to illustrate how big their love for one another is. Every time Little Nutbrown Hare says how much he loves Big Nutbrown Hare, the older rabbit demonstrates just how much more he loves the little one. In one scene, the little rabbit opens his arms as wide as they will go and states “I love you this much!” To which the bigger rabbit responds by stretching his long arms out and saying, “but I love YOU this much!” 

That same imagery of love is reflected in another book. John 3:16 says: 

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” 

What Jesus did for us on Calvary is singularly the greatest act of love. He descended from an existence of splendour and glory into a life of poverty and hardship. A life that ended in incomprehensible suffering because He saw you and thought it was all worth it. 

And when that final breath left His overstretched lungs, creation held its own. Not in fear, but in hopeful anticipation for what was to come. For while the death of Jesus was love, the resurrection was hope.
The Bible doesn’t tell us what happened between what we now know as Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Not much is said of any events occurring after Jesus said, “it is finished” and when the three women found the empty tomb, and yet, I can imagine how His body was taken down, how He was carefully washed, wrapped in linen, and scented with myrrh, before being placed in that tomb. Where in that moment the darkness pressed in. Impenetrable. Gleeful. The air stagnant with malicious retribution. Unseen a battle raged. Unseen a victor began to appear. Unseen, until a flicker of light emerged from the abyss. Faint, it started yet powerful it grew until it roared like a cascading waterfall through the black. Expunging the hissing dark, every crevice filled with undulating, blinding white. Uncontainable, it erupted forth and swept across the world, the first breath of life in three days. 

On these days of remembrance—while the world celebrates a long weekend, chocolate, and an oversized talking rabbit—let us celebrate the giving of the Lamb’s life in the name of love for the salvation of all. Because with His arms stretched wide across a wooden cross, beaten, broken, humiliated, Jesus saw each and every single person, those with their small arms spread wide and those who hold them at their sides, and with pain seared breath whispered, “I love you this much.”