There is a beautiful story about the courtship of Moses Mendelssohn, the grandfather of the great German composer. Moses Mendelssohn was a small man with a misshapen, humped back. One day he visited a merchant in Hamburg who had a lovely daughter. Though Mendelssohn admired her greatly, she avoided him, seemingly afraid of his grotesque hump. 

On the last day of his visit he went to tell her goodbye. Her face seemed to beam with beauty but when he entered, she cast her eyes to the floor. Mendelssohn's heart ached for her. After some small talk, he slowly drew to the subject that filled his mind. "Do you believe that marriages are made in Heaven?" he asked. 

"Yes," replied the young woman. "And do you?" 

"Of course," Mendelssohn answered. "I believe that at the birth of each child, the Lord says, 'That boy shall marry that girl.' But in my case, the Lord also added, 'But alas, his wife will have a terrible hump.' 

"At that moment I called, 'Oh, Lord, that would be a tragedy for her. Please give me the humped back and let her be beautiful.'" 

We are told that the young woman was so moved by these words that she reached for Mendelssohn's hand and later became his loving and faithful wife. 

In trying to deal with the meaning of the cross on which Christ died, the early church came to understand that those nailprints in the hands and feet of the Master should have been ours. But God so loved the world that he sent his own Son to bear the burden brought about by the iniquity of us all. Can you deal with that? Can you believe that God really cares about us that much?