One week before my son Daniel was born, I came home from church on a Sunday afternoon. The Lord whispered in my ear to sit down with a pen and write whatever He put on my heart. I was to mail it to my Mom and Dad, I had no idea what I was going to write. I also had no idea that just a week later Daniel would be born with Down Syndrome and be so sick he would almost die. I also had no idea what depths of despair and darkness would overwhelm me because of his birth.

Dear mum and dad

There is not a hair on your head that the Lord does not know. The Lord Himself, in the garden of Gethsemane was tried to His very core, even His closest friends had fallen asleep on Him. And in His agony, in His despair, He cried out to His Father, “Father, take this cup from me”, at that very second we see the Lords humanity, He is so able to understand our situations.

Sometimes we would question ,”why Lord”, but there is always a reason.The lord cried from the cross “my God, my God, why has thou forsaken me.” At that very point He touched man’s lowest ebb, despair, hell itself. I do not know, but I imagine that this was the hardest moment for our Father as He watched His Son hang from that cross and withdraw His presence.

The Father in His infinite wisdom and mercy and love for us, sacrificed His Son. Oh the agony the Father felt, but now the perfect wisdom of our Father is shown. There is nothing now His Son does not know, His dying and rising, formed in perfection, is now the hope of mankind. Our Jesus is alive and He knows us inside out. He will never abandon us.

And when our time arrives to come into the very presence of the living God, when we kneel before the precious lamb of God, when we become one with our Lord, then we will know all that the Lord has done for us. It is an honor and a privilege to serve the Lord Jesus Christ. I tremble at the very thought of coming into the presence of Almighty God. We simply can’t imagine, our minds are totally inadequate to realize the Glory of our Lord. May the Lord strengthen you and fill you with His glory. The victory is already won, let us wait upon the Lord.

This letter arrived back at my house two weeks after Daniel was born. My mother informed me that the Lord had told her that letter was not for her, but was for me. I sat down and read the letter and wept when I realized that the Almighty God of the universe had not only sent me a letter, but that He was sharing some of His pain as a Father with me.

Not only was He healing me at this point, but my mind snapped back to the time when my older son had been very badly burned,third degree burns over 60% of his body. For the first several days as part of his treatment to avoid infection and death, the hospital would force him down into salt baths. They asked for my assistance. It was so hellish that there are no words to describe it.

He was only two years old but it would take everything that I had to put him down into that bath and hold him there. He would flail and scream. My own inner scream, if heard, would have caused the stars to fall from the heavens. His eyes would burn into mine with confusion. I was the his father, I was supposed to protect him, he could not possibly understand why I was doing this to him. Over those days my hair started to fall out even although I was only 20. Big circles of missing hair such was the trauma of it all. Now all these years later I was being given a little insight into what our Heavenly Father suffered as He watched His Son be rejected and mocked then tortured and nailed to a tree. And then have all the filth of the world put upon Him.

Our minds cannot comprehend the pain our Father suffered. And at any point He could have stopped it, why didn’t He? “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him, shall not perish but gain everlasting life.” (John 3:16) This is a love that is beyond comprehension. We can feel pain and emotions and horror, one can only imagine what the giver of these emotions can feel. To reject this sacrifice is what separates the saved from the unsaved. This is what we will be judged upon. Not how good we are, or how holy we are, but have we accepted Jesus as God’s Holy and only way to heaven.

I did find myself asking , “why Lord?” Of course the Lord knows the bigger picture. Can you imagine any Psychologist in the world, looking at two dysfunctional people and saying to himself, “yes, these guys need a mentally handicapped child in their lives.” Yet Daniel, with all his medical problems and challenges is a perferct gift from the treasures of heaven. God the Father reached into His treasury, pulled out Daniel and said to Himself , “Yes, this is exactly what they need.” So great has been the effect that my unsaved wife, upon seeing a couples marriage in deep trouble, whispered to me “Its a shame they don’t have a Daniel.” How great is our God, how much higher is His ways than ours?