Tears streamed down her lightly freckled cheeks as her blue eyes swam in an emotion she couldn’t quite identify. Her head bowed over the opened page. Her finger reverently traced each word. She whispered his name. She squeezed her eyes shut and muttered, why?
She shook her head, too repulsed to continue.
She scanned the page for her place, too riveted to stop.

Several heartbeats later, she looked up from her seat at the kitchen counter.

“Mama, did you know he did this?” she asked with breathless horror. “Did you know they did all of that to him?”

Seeing the tears in my little girl’s eyes broke something inside of me. “Yes,” I whispered.

“But why? Why would they do that to him?” she demanded. “How could they do that to him?”

She looked down to the book open before her—to the pages containing words written in the color of the innocent blood that was shed.

“How could he let them do that to him?” she asked, gently touching the pages she had just read.

“It was the only way we could be with him,” I answered, feeling the weight of the moment deep in my soul.

She knew the answer—she had given the answer countless times.
But this day was different.
Something seismic had shifted in her young life; something invisible and yet more real than the air filling my lungs.

This day, the truth which she had heard others speak of so many times—truth which had taken residence in her head—was now, as she experienced it for herself, being etched deep into her heart.

“He loves us that much,” she said, her words full of a new awareness.

Her ten year old hands caressed the pages of the Bible. Her head bowed in reverent acceptance of his gift.

“I love him so much, mama,” she said, no longer trying to hide her tears.

I pulled her in my arms.
We cried tears of lament for the pain and humiliation our Savior endured on our behalf.
We cried tears of joy that because of the hope and a future his sacrifice affords us.

We cried because tears are often the conduit which carries truth from the head to the heart.

That day at at the kitchen counter, the roots of a young girl’s faith pushed their way a little further into her heart.
They became rooted in Jesus.
Not rooted in my faith.
Not rooted in a Sunday school lesson or a sermon or a devotional book.
But rooted in the person of Jesus. In his life, death and resurrection.

They became rooted in love.

Much love,
Jen