Fifty-Three Months Without a Meal

In 2007, marine biologists at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute discovered something extraordinary on the floor of Monterey Canyon, nearly a mile beneath the Pacific. A deep-sea octopus had attached her clutch of eggs to a rocky ledge and begun her vigil.

Over the next fifty-three months, researcher Bruce Robison and his team returned again and again by submersible. Each time, there she was. Guarding. Waiting. Wasting away. She never once left to feed. Her skin grew pale and loose, her eyes clouded, her body slowly consuming itself to keep her alive just long enough for her young to develop.

When the eggs finally hatched in September 2011 — the longest brooding period ever recorded for any animal — the mother was gone. She had poured every last calorie of her own body into the survival of the next generation.

Something in that image should stop us cold. Because the cross works the same way. Jesus did not give from His surplus. He gave from His substance — His body broken, His life poured out — so that we might live. "Greater love has no one than this," He told His friends, "to lay down one's life for one's friends."

The deepest sacrifices are never partial. They cost everything. And because He held nothing back, we were born into life.