Parenting, Handling Poop, and the Disproportionate Mysteries of Easter

So when you're a baby, you're just a ton of trouble. No way around it, nothing you can do about it, you're just high-maintenance.

As you get a little older, you begin to see this, maybe take some responsibility for yourself. And then as you grow into adulthood you realize "wow, this whole having babies thing seems like it'd be a ton of work!"

But you never really know either the cost or the joy of it until you experience it yourself. Being a dad has been way harder and more intense than I thought it would be. I have exceeded my emotional capacities and experienced sleep-deprivation and handled more poop than I ever really wanted to.

And it's also brought me moments of pure joy that I don't know I'd ever experienced before--or at least, not that particular flavor of joy.

There are some things that you cannot know the depths or heights of until or unless you experience them yourself.

And so I don't think that even when heaven descends and God himself is here with us again and all mysteries are revealed--even then I don't know that we'll ever know the depths and pains of these last two days for Jesus.

What Jesus does in this Saturday of waiting has been a matter of speculation and debate for centuries. But what we do know is that Friday wasn't pretty and it's a good bet that Saturday didn't get any easier.

Paul, reflecting on Easter, writes, "You are not your own. You have been bought with a price." We'll never fully know that price, not even when all things are revealed. Perhaps some events in Jesus' life and death will remain mystery. Perhaps we'll know cognitively what Jesus went through but like life before kids it will remain emotionally un-knowable.

The good news is that our own experience of the pain and joy of Easter is and will one day be vastly disproportionate: the pain will remain shrouded in mystery into eternity and there will be a place where our knowledge and experience of it will stop.

Neither will we know the fullness of the joy of the Lord. But our experience of that joy will unfold into an infinite future, the depths and wonders and power of that joy will be ours in ever-increasing measure: boundless, glorious, free, wondrous bliss.

The pain will end. The joy will unfurl into a glorious, endless horizon--beauty upon beauty, grace upon grace, laughter and peace and contentment and rest and sheer delight forever and ever.

Happy Easter.