Do You Understand the Price?

With more bone searing cold and snow predicted, I decided to repair a hole in my thickest gloves this morning before going to work. As I did, I had to chuckle about my pets. You see, they are in cahoots with one another. Katy routinely knocks things off the counter and kitchen table (where she is not allowed) and dresser. She has taken to getting on top of the refrigerator and knocking down magnets and pictures as well. Mali loves all things soft. She steals socks and dish towels and pajama bottoms and stows them in a nest under the bed. Hadley firmly believes that anything the cats have knocked to the floor is for her. So, last night she retrieved my missing glove from under the bed. I would have thanked her, but in seconds she had a hole in the palm.

I got Hadley the beginning of March 2009. To be honest, at times I've wondered if I had added up the cost if I would have gotten a puppy. Between the vet, the leashes, the kennel, and the dog food, she has been an expense. Add to that the cords she has chewed, the blanket she put a hole in, all the plastic items that she crunches before I can retrieve them, my gloves, and (the one that made me the most angry) the piece of wall paper border chewed directly off the wall!

I'm not big on Christmas music, but this year I found a couple of songs I really enjoyed. One was Joseph's Lullaby by Mercy Me. It goes:

Go to sleep my son
This manger for your bed
You have a long road before you
Rest your little head

Can you feel the weight of your glory?
Do you understand the price?
Does the Father guard your heart for now
So you can sleep tonight?

Go to sleep my son
Go and chase your dreams
This world can wait for one more moment
Go and sleep in peace

I believe the glory of heaven
Is lying in my arms tonight
Lord, I ask that he for just this moment
Simply be my child

Go to sleep my son
Baby close your eyes
Soon enough you'll save the day
But for now dear child of mine
Oh, my Jesus, sleep tight.

It's a pale, pale, almost translucent comparison, but I think that even if I had known the cost, I would have gotten Hadley. She greets me enthusiastically. Her tail is always wagging. She follows me devotedly. She has brought me laughter with her antics. Just like Katy and Mali, she is a snuggle bug. (I've begun to wonder if I would know how to sleep without one or two or three furry friends on top of me.) She has been a bright spot in many dreary days.

But there is a cost. There is a cost in finances. There is a cost in time. There is a cost for my heart.

Can you feel the weight of your glory? Do you understand the price? Two questions from that song for an infant Jesus. I cannot fathom what Jesus knew or didn't know as an infant. I do not know when the awareness of who He was dawned on Him or if it was always present. Was it in the temple as a boy of 12? Was it many years before when Joseph took him out to see the night sky? Was it when studying with other boys his age and realizing that He understood the Father in such vastly different ways?

One of my plans for the New Year is reading Grace Notes by Philip Yancey. There is a selected reading from his works for each day of the year. I'm only six days in, but I find myself wanting to read ahead.

One selection brushed on answering those questions. Can you feel the weight of your glory? Do you understand the price? Yancey wrote in the selection entitled "Rosetta Stone,"

Because of Jesus we need never question God's desire for intimacy. Does God really want close contact with us? Jesus gave up Heaven for it. In person he reestablished the original link between God and human beings, between seen and unseen worlds.

Yes, Jesus understood the price -- giving up the glory of heaven even for just a time, creator choosing to become created, knowing that every step, from being carried in Mary's arms to toddling around the house to walking into the Jordan, every step took Him closer to the cross. And He came anyway.

He came because you and I are worth the price. He came because He could not -- no would not -- fathom not knowing us and being known by us.

Do you understand the price for knowing God?

My story about the cost of Hadley is not even the hint of a shadow of the price that Jesus paid for us because He so desired intimacy with us. I know that. But I can only hope that when I whisper thank you or go to Him in prayer or respond to a prompting or lose myself in worship that I give Him some portion of the joy that I feel when Hadley and Katy and Mali draw close.