The Maybe

My son and I spent the afternoon side by side, watching travel videos, our eyes lighting up with every sweeping coastline and cobblestone street. It’s our shared language: dreaming, planning, imagining the next great adventure. My daughter often joins in, bringing her own humor to the moment. She’s whimsical, and she enjoys being surprised through the journey.  But my son and I, we’re the planners. The ones who sketch out routes and savor the anticipation.

These moments are more than just a pastime, they are our special time together.  

When you've battled childhood cancer twice, especially brain cancer, you see life through a different lens. My son lives with the aftermath daily. Some symptoms never leave, never quiet. He wakes up fighting, every single morning. And yet, he does so from a place of thanksgiving. Grateful to be here. Grateful for the days that are easy, and even the ones that aren’t.

His resilience is humbling. His faithfulness puts mine to shame. He is steady when I feel shaken, strong when I feel small. He inspires me more than he’ll ever know.

Would I ever give him up? Not for anything.
Would I ever stand by and let someone hurt him? Not a chance.
Like any other Mom, I would defend him with everything I have. I love him that deeply, that fiercely,  because he and his sister are the greatest treasures God has ever given me.

For God So Loved the World

It was late, so late the city of Jerusalem had gone still. The oil lamps had burned low, the streets emptied of voices. But one man was still awake. Restless. His heart stirred not with politics or policy, but with the quiet ache of a soul in need.

Nicodemus came by night, shrouded in the darkness, perhaps due to fear or perhaps by shame. He was a ruler, a Pharisee, a man with power and influence. He could have come to Jesus with concerns about governance, temple affairs, or the growing unrest among the people. But it wasn’t civic questions that kept him up at night. It was something deeper. It was the unrelenting questions of the soul.

He found Jesus alone, lit only by the flicker of lamplight. No crowd. No audience. Just the silence of the night and the steady gaze of the One who knew him completely.

"Rabbi," he said, “we know that You are a teacher who has come from God. No one could perform the signs You do unless God were with Him.”

Jesus didn’t start with small talk. He went straight to the heart.

“Nicodemus,” He said, “no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”

Born again? Nicodemus was baffled. How could someone be born a second time? Could a man reenter his mother’s womb? Nicodemus was a scholar, a man of logic and law.  But, He felt uneducated at that very moment.  Jesus was introducing something completely different: a new birth, a complete transformation of spirit, not of flesh.

Nicodemus struggled to comprehend it, just as many of us do. We are born into a fallen world, into corrupted flesh. How could something truly new emerge from what is already broken?  But that is exactly what Jesus was offering, not self-repair, not improvement, but transformation. Something done in us and for us, something we could never do on our own.

Nicodemus couldn't fathom what Jesus was telling him.  God, in Christ, was reconciling the world to Himself. Not condemning it, not rubbing its guilt in its face. But rescuing it, healing it, and saving it.

Then Jesus said what would become the heartbeat of the Gospel:

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

Did you know this verse was spoken to a teacher of the law?  Not to an unbeliever, not to a criminal, and not to a child.  This verse, often considered the most basic verse of Christianity, was said to a highly educated leader of the church.  Nicodemus had a lot to think about when he left that evening.  

There is no salvation in any other.
There is no name higher, no work more complete.
Christ came, not to condemn the world for its guilt, but to redeem it from it.
Not to heap on shame, but to lift it.
Not to crush the sinner, but to raise the dead.

Things changed for Nicodemus.  He approached Jesus cloaked in night, but like many of us, he didn’t stay that way. Though he came in secret, he wouldn’t remain in the shadows forever. At the cross, when others fled, Nicodemus stepped forward, publicly and unashamed, bringing burial spices and honoring the broken body of the Christ he had once met by lamplight.

Nicodemus came by night, like so many of us.  But light found him.

What would we do without John 3:16?  What would we do if God had decided to condemn the world instead of save it?  

I think of my own son.

He, too, knows what it’s like to live with shadows. He has faced more pain in his young life than many ever will. The physical toll, the lingering symptoms, the weight of a fight that never really ends. There are days that begin with struggle and nights that end in exhaustion. And yet, there is radiant, unshakable light in him because he knows Who brought him through.

And I know how fiercely I love him. 
Would I ever give him up? Not for anyone.

And most certainly not for a maybe.
Maybe they’ll believe.
Maybe they’ll choose life.
Maybe they’ll love him back.
Maybe they won’t.

No, I couldn’t do it. Not even close.

But God did.  God gave His Son not for the guaranteed, but for the possible. For the chance, for the hope that someone might say yes. That someone might believe, might be reborn, might step out of the night and into the light.

That’s the kind of love we can’t understand. It stretches further than logic, reaches deeper than grief, and towers higher than human strength.  Jesus didn’t come to condemn the world.  He came to save it.  And in doing so, the Father gave what I know I could never give.

Because God so loved the world.

For Nicodemus.
For me.
For my son.
For the world.

The Story Isn’t Over

Nicodemus came to Jesus under cover of night.  He was careful, cautious, uncertain, and maybe afraid. But that meeting wasn’t the end of his story.  It was the beginning.

What Nicodemus didn’t realize was that Jesus wasn’t just describing some future transformation.  He was explaining exactly what was happening to him in that very moment. The spiritual rebirth Jesus spoke of was already underway. The old questions were cracking open, and belief was beginning to bloom.

Isn’t that how God works? He knows us far better than we know ourselves.  When God reveals something, when truth lights up even one corner of our heart, nothing stays the same.

That night, the light began to rise in Nicodemus.  Even though he didn’t fully understand it yet, that conversation would become the moment everything changed.  Jesus wasn’t offering metaphor, He was offering renewal.

Nicodemus was right in one way: we can’t physically be born again. But God doesn’t need to reconstruct the body to restore the soul.  The past doesn’t get to define the future, not when spiritual rebirth is possible.  In Christ, the old truly does become new.

John 3:16 isn’t just a verse from the past.  It’s a declaration for the present.  God still loves the world, not the sin, but He loves His messy, broken, beautiful creation.  And He still offers us the maybe.

He gave up everything so we could have the freedom to choose.
To choose light.
To choose grace.
To begin again.

Scripture doesn’t tell us what happened immediately after Jesus and Nicodemus' conversation, but we know Nicodemus had to walk home.  So let’s picture it:  

The courtyard is quiet now. The oil lamp flickers low, casting a golden glow on the edges of stone walls. The air holds the hush of something sacred. Nicodemus lingers a moment longer. His heart is full, too full to speak, and his mind is swirling with words he can’t quite put away:

“You must be born again.”
“The wind blows where it pleases.”
“For God so loved the world…”

He draws his cloak tighter around his shoulders and steps out into the cool night. The sounds of the city have long faded. The streets are empty, but his soul is alive with movement.  Jerusalem sleeps, but inside him, something has awakened.

He walks slowly at first. His feet know the path, but his thoughts drift far beyond it. The soft scrape of his sandals against the stone seems louder now in the silence. He passes familiar homes, shuttered and dark, where the smell of evening meals still lingers in the air. Olive trees whisper in the night breeze. A dog barks somewhere in the distance, then fades.

But Nicodemus doesn’t notice much of it, because he is not the same man who walked these streets an hour ago.  There’s something unsteady about his breathing, not out of fear, but from the weight of what’s just been revealed. Something holy presses on his chest, like a truth too big for his body to contain. His hands tremble slightly, not from the cold, but from the realization that the God he has served all his life… just spoke to him face to face.

He didn’t ask for sacrifice.
He didn’t demand performance.
He offered rebirth.

Nicodemus walks a little faster now, as if the rhythm of his steps can keep pace with the change unfolding inside him. His mind protests.  He’s a Pharisee, a scholar, a ruler. He’s not supposed to be easily moved. He’s not supposed to be undone by a carpenter from Nazareth.

But he is.  Because nothing Jesus said was for show. It was for him.  And every word rang true.

The wind lifts the edge of his cloak as he rounds a corner. He looks up at the stars scattered across the sky, wondering how many times he’s seen them, without ever truly seeing. How many prayers he’s recited, how many laws he’s upheld… and yet none of it brought the clarity he feels right now. In the dark. Alone. And somehow, more known than ever before.

He slows near his home. He places a hand on the wooden frame before stepping inside. He knows this night will mark him for the rest of his life. He will never forget the way Jesus looked at him. The way His words cut and healed at once. The way He named a need that Nicodemus hadn’t known how to speak.

This was the beginning.
This was the moment the old started falling away.
This was when light first broke through.

And long before he would stand at the cross, long before he would carry myrrh and aloes to bury the body of the man he once questioned in the shadows, this was the night the light began to rise in him.

The story didn’t end when Nicodemus left the courtyard.
It had only just begun.