Four Years in the Dark

In 2007, researchers from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute spotted a deep-sea octopus clinging to a rocky ledge, 4,600 feet beneath the Pacific. Over the next four and a half years, marine biologist Bruce Robison and his team returned again and again. Each time, they found her in the same spot, guarding her clutch of eggs.

For fifty-three months, she never ate. Her skin grew pale and scarred. Her body slowly consumed itself to keep her alive long enough to protect the developing eggs in that frigid darkness. When the team made their final visit in 2011, the eggs had hatched. The mother was gone.

She gave everything so that new life could emerge.

The apostle Paul wrote that Christ "emptied Himself," pouring out His life not in a moment of dramatic heroism but through sustained, deliberate, costly love. The cross was not an impulse. It was a choice carried out across a lifetime of obedience unto death.

Sacrifice is rarely a single grand gesture. More often, it looks like faithfulness in the dark — giving of yourself day after day when no one is watching, trusting that the life you pour out will bear fruit you may never see.

The God who spoke the oceans into being also designed a creature that would spend her last breath guarding what she loved. How much more will He guard you?