The following is adapted from Loved to Life: A 40-Day Pilgrimage with Love Himself That Will Change Your Life by Ann Voskamp.

When we can’t lift the weight of our broken hearts, the weight of our burdens, the weight of being us, all there is to do is lift our eyes—only our eyes—to the Lamb of God. 

He offers His own back to lift and shoulder it all. Only the Lamb of God has a back equal to whatever burden we bear. He is the Brokenhearted Bearer of the World. 

The lifting of eyes to look to the Lamb of God—this is lifting that even the weariest among us can do. And yet, in the paradox of all things true, the way we turn our eyes may actually be the hardest of all. 

Because focusing the eyes is always a matter of how we focus the heart. 

Where the eyes are fixed, so the heart is. Where the looking goes, so the heart goes. Where you look is where you love. 

Looking to what your hands can do, looking to what your work is working on, looking to what all your striving is reaching for does little to no good at all. You don’t have to know what to do, but just decide: Lord, Lamb of God, “our eyes are on you” (2 Chronicles 20:12). 

Where you look will save your life. 

Behold your Lamb, who holds nothing against you but only holds you against His heart, so you can let go and hold nothing back from Him. Lucky in love are all of us whose unspoken broken is forgiven, whose failures are taken away by the One who takes away all the sins of the world, because He is so taken with you, His beloved (Psalm 32:1; Hebrews 10:4). 

Before the foundation of the world was ever laid, here is your Lamb, who laid down His life because of His everlasting love for you. Before one step was ever taken out of the Garden of Eden, here is your Lamb, who, there in the Garden, stepped forward to give Himself to cover all your nakedness and brokenness. Before our father Abraham sacrificed his only son, here is your Lamb, who offered Himself as the only begotten One to be our substitution, our provision, our restitution, our soul revolution, our absolution, and our ultimate solution. Before any wails passed the lips of Egypt over the death of its firstborns, here is your Lamb, who sacrificed Himself for every doorframe so the angel of death might pass over all God’s children with a kiss of undying grace. Before every Levitical priest with cleansing on his mind, here is your Lamb, who laid bare His vulnerable heart, slain with love for you. Before the shearers, here is your Lamb, who was silent because His love was speaking the loudest of all, silencing every lie that you aren’t worth being loved back to the fullest life. 

Here is your Lamb, Love laid down, right before you. He is looking into your eyes to see if you are looking for Him. 

What should have more preeminence than looking toward our Lamb, who slays our every lion? 

But the human eye tends to be drawn toward wherever a hole has been drawn. 

It’s the way the human eye turns—we look toward loss, fixated on what we can’t fix. The eyes of the heart are drawn to absences. We look toward loss because our interior health is ultimately a function of how we see loss, process loss, live in spite of loss, live through endless loss. How we view our losses determines how we brave our life. 

How do we look at our losses and keep on fully living? Look, behold—the Lamb of God who takes away all the wrongness and darkness and sinfulness, who takes it all so we can actually know the loss of all we’ve desperately wanted to shake off. Behold the Lamb, who takes away all we’ve wanted gone, so none of our burdens or losses can ever outweigh our great gain in Him. 

The Lamb who takes away everything wrong for us—He is worthy to take everything in our hands as our offering of thanks: 

The slain Lamb is worthy! 

Take the power, the wealth, the wisdom, the strength! 

Take the honor, the glory, the blessing! 

Revelation 5:12-14, The Message

Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away all the darkness to take us to Himself, to see us, to know us, to hold us. 

When you keep beholding the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, you have what it takes to keep going. One holy step after the other, on a pilgrimage into the only Love that wholly revives.