Most often, when this question is asked, it's as a plaintive (mournful) or complaining cry. Someone has "volunteered" us for an odious task, the car has broken down again, illness has struck close to home, or some other trouble has hit us. The question is usually addressed to the one we think has something to do with the direction the trouble goes, which means, someone in authority, which, in turn, usually ends up being God. "Why me, Lord, why do I have to suffer so often, why do I feel like Job had it easy?"

I confess I have asked that question in that sense a few times, (in fact just as I was typing these lines, I got a phone call that tempted me to do just that!) but more often those words have carried a different meaning. This morning was one such time. As I lay there praying, thanking the Lord for this day, confessing my sin and unworthiness, I asked God, "Father, why me? Why would You sacrifice your Son Jesus so that I could become your son also?" I (we) sometimes think we're not such a bad choice, you know, "I'm (we're) not the worst HE could do! Now old so & so at church, I really wonder about God's choosing him!" When you search the scriptures though, you realize all sin is abhorrent to God. Romans 5:8 says HE showed His love towards us, in that, while we (all of us equally) were yet sinners, Christ died for us. None of us would have won the "Mr./Miss/Mrs. Heaven" pageant. Isaiah 64:6 says we are all unclean and all our righteousnesses (our very best sin covering clothes) are like filthy rags (those stinky, smelly rags a dirt covered beggar would wear.) In other words, my friend, we had nothing to attract God with.

Want to know the answer God gave me? It turned out to be the very same one HE's given me each time I've asked, a very simple one, yet the most profound answer possible. When I asked, "God, why me? Why did you sacrifice your Son for me so I could become your son, also?", HE said, "Because I love you!"

I've asked many other questions of God, trying to understand the answer, but it always comes back to that same thing. Do you know the same answer is what God gives to you if you ask this question. The rock bottom reply from the very King of all creation to us lowly sinners is, "Because I love you!" Warts and all, deformities, stinking clothes, bad breath, bad manners, plain old ugly, etc., etc.,but God, the infinitely beautiful, Perfect, High and lifted up One, Whose radiance would blind us, so loved you and me that HE gave His only begotten Son, so that we wouldn't have to suffer the fury of His wrath in Hell, but instead, can enjoy the wondrous joys eternal with Him. What a God!!!!

            Ben