As I drove home, I told Donna how much I appreciated technology at times like these. Then we got to talking about how precious it is to hear from our children, especially when they are away and we still worry about them.

    “Abba Father, all things are possible for you. Let this cup pass from me I pray, but not my will, but yours be done.”

    This was the Son’s message to the Father. In a pre-technological world, the Creator of the universe received a message from his Son so urgent, so emotional, that the Son sweat great drops like blood. He had told his friends that he was overwhelmed with emotion, even to the point of death. It was such a powerful and trying moment, God sent angels to attend to his Son. But he also answered his Son, “No!”

He loves us and wants us as his children.

    In a world adrift in permissiveness, “No!” hardly sounds loving and attentive. But this “No!” was loving because God loved us enough to endure watching the torture of his Son so that we could become his children. It is one thing to watch your child suffer and not be able to do anything about it. It’s quite another kind of suffering when you have the power to stop the suffering and do not. God had the power to end it and yet he didn’t because he loves us and wants us as his children.

    But there was more than one message delivered to God from the Son as he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. “Not my will...” Jesus had said. It was his way of saying, “If there is no other way to redeem them, no other way to save them, then Father, like you, I love them too much to live without them. I would rather bear the pain of the Cross, than to live and they be lost!”

    No matter what Valentines we get this week, our ultimate Valentine is found on “a hill far away” where we find “an old rugged cross” and the ultimate message of love sent by God’s Son, and our brother, Jesus.