…….

Conservation of resources is a theory psychologists use to explain stress.  In short it says that people only have so many “resources” for dealing with problems and each additional demand on those resources drains our “reserves.”  This is why we can find ourselves so angry and irritated with people for something simple.

Can anyone say happy holidays?

If you’ve ever felt yourself overwhelmed by requests for help, you’ve experienced this.  Even when these requests come from people we care about, they can still feel overpowering and make us want to hide.

Yet God deals with that every day.

There are literally billions of people turning to him in need.  Asking for stuff.  Nagging even.  Yet he never grows weary or tired.

“Oh sure” you’re thinking, ”but that’s because God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and eternal.”  True.  But frankly I think that would make it worse.  Look at it this way: if you knew the answer to every question, wouldn’t it get annoying to have people asking you the same questions?  I imagine Stephen Hawking gets tired of answering “what’s a black hole?”

The same with being all-powerful.  If athletes and rock stars get tired of signing autographs, think how it would be if you could do anything you wanted, whenever you wanted.  But instead of being left alone to do that, you were always surrounded by someone asking for help.  Would you just get tired of people coming to you because they knew you could help them?

Even having all the time in the world wouldn’t be enough.  In fact that’s probably the worst of the three.  You’d be stuck for all eternity in the equivalent of customer service!

So there must be another explanation of why God is so involved in our lives.  And the only one that I can come up with is love.  When we love something or someone we’re willing to spend whatever time, energy, and resources to fix the problem.  I love video games, so I spend a lot of time and energy thinking about them.  Love is what makes us willing to answer the same questions time and again.  It’s what allows us to use whatever resources we have to help.  And it’s what allows us to be willing to spend an infinite amount of time with someone.

I believe this is what the essence of Easter is.  God didn’t have to come down to earth to relate to us.  He could have said “take it or leave it” and walked away.  But he not only chose to live among us.  He chose to die in an awful, horrible way.  What makes an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-time God do something like that?

Love.

And that’s the Easter miracle.