On the night before the final plague that God inflicted on the Pharaoh of Egypt, the children of Israel smeared the blood of a lamb on their doors and prayed that wrath and destruction would pass over them and spare the lives of their firstborn. On the night before His death, during a celebration commemorating that very first Passover, Jesus Christ smeared the blood of the Lamb, His own blood, and prayed that wrath and destruction would pass over Him and spare the life of the Firstborn. And while our Heavenly Father did spare the lives of the firstborn among the children of Israel during that first passover, on this occasion, when His own firstborn was pleading that this cup should pass, He did not spare His Firstborn Son from the incomprehensible horrors of the destroying angel. Christ had the power to pass over the infinite abyss of pain and sorrow. God the Father had the power to save His Son and allow Him to pass over the suffering that awaited. It would mean confining the vast majority of Their family to the torments of Hell, but such a fate was no more than they ultimately deserved. But Jesus did not pass over the exquisite agony of an infinite sacrifice. He waded into the winepress where the grapes of wrath are stored. He drank down the bitter cup until long past any other person would have choked on it, drowned in it, and been crushed under the ocean of misery and endless woe. He could not pass over the atoning sacrifice and abandon His beloved brothers and sisters and friends to the terrors of death and Hell, so instead He passed under. He descended below all things. Our Savior is not floating idly by on a cloud passing over and looking down on us and our suffering and vacillating on whether or not He’s in the mood to reach down and pluck us from our quiet desperation. When we have hit rock bottom, He is the Rock at the bottom, catching us when we fall and giving us the strength and the courage and the humility to pass under our most agonizing trials and tribulations. When we have no direction to go but down and through, He is right there with us, all the way down and then all the way back up again on the other side. I am so grateful that when my Savior had the choice to pass over or pass under the sins and the weight of the world, He chose to pass under. I just hope that I can follow His example and pass under and through the challenges that I am called on to face.
