Jesus Going Home

I am absolutely captured by the idea of the Great Exchange. I have been preaching a series on identity and so I am forced to look at all the mirrors I use to figure out how I should be feeling about myself. I can find a mirror almost anywhere. How I look physically is just one mirror. If I think you like me, my possessions, my job, my kids, even my blog can all be used as a reflection to help me figure out how I should feel about me. It is crazy, a little sick, and completely sinful. But then Jesus came and went to the cross to exchange my frantic need to have everything be about me for his deep peace and his relationship with his Father in heaven. "God made Him who knew no sin to be sin so that we might in Him become the righteousness of God". But the price was enormous for Jesus. On the cross he lost his relationship with the Father,(the Father turned his face away) and it made Jesus scream. It was like he came apart. Anyway, I was reading in Acts 1 when the disciples were saying goodbye to Jesus after the resurrection. It says, "and as they were speaking He was lifted up while they were looking on, and a cloud received Him out of their sight". In the Old Testament God's visible presence was portrayed as a cloud. It was called the Shekinah glory of God. It struck me as I sat in my chair in the early morning that this was the reunion. God the Father rushing down to grab hold of His Son Jesus. It was Jesus rushing to grab his Father. For whatever reason it brought tears to my eyes. I was genuinely happy for Jesus. After all he had done for me, after coming undone and losing the love of the Father, there in my chair I could see them in my mind's eye coming back together and all the universe including me felt the joy reverberate. The Big Bang has nothing on that.