Author and speaker Brennan Manning has an amazing story about how he got the name “Brennan.” While growing up, his best friend was Ray. The two of them did everything together: bought a new car together as teenagers, double-dated together, went to school together and so forth. They even enlisted in the Army together, went to boot camp together and fought on the frontlines together. One night while sitting in a foxhole, Brennan was reminiscing about the old days in Brooklyn while Ray listened and ate a chocolate bar. Suddenly a live grenade came into the foxhole. Ray looked a Brennan, smiled, dropped his chocolate bar and threw himself on the live grenade. It exploded, killing Ray, but Brennan’s life was spared.
When Brennan became a priest he was instructed to take on the name of a saint. He thought of his friend, Ray Brennan. So he took on the name Brennan. Years later he went to visit Ray’s mother in Brooklyn. They sat up late one night having tea when Brennan asked her, “Do you think Ray loved me?” Mrs. Brennan got up off the couch, shook her finger in front of Brennan’s face and shouted, “Jesus Christ–what more could he have done for you?!” Brennan said that at that moment he experienced an epiphany. He imagined himself standing before the cross of Jesus wondering, Does God really love me? and Jesus’ mother Mary pointing to her son, saying, “Jesus Christ–what more could he have done for you?”
The cross of Jesus is God’s way of doing all he could do for us. And yet we often wonder, Does God really love me? Am I important to God? Does God care about me? And Jesus’ mother responds, “What more could he have done for you?”
James Bryan Smith, The Good and Beautiful God: Falling in Love with the God Jesus Knows, p. 142-143
Today is Ash Wednesday. It is also St. Valentine’s Day.
You may be wondering if you are loved. You are. John 15:13 says, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
Ash Wednesday is a day of repentance, a day to be reminded of our frailty, mortality, and failures. But it is also a day of love. It is a day we are marked with a cross. It is a day we are reminded of the cross of Christ, who came in weakness to give us strength, who took on mortality to give us immortality, and who took our sin and failure upon himself in order to extend to us the gifts of restoration, forgiveness, and fellowship with God.
We have been embraced by way of a costly love. What more could he have done for you?
