Suffering
March 31
Reading through some definitions of suffer, the first one which read "to experience something unpleasant" just didn't quite equate for me. Searching further, this one hit home more…"to submit to or be forced to endure."
While I'm still in shock mode and awaiting the funeral tomorrow of our friend, who took his own life last week, I know he must have been suffering greatly. I'm spending a lot of time in prayer this week and most of the personal prayers for individuals relate to great suffering. One young mother underwent surgery yesterday to correct a heart condition in her unborn child and the child died. My mind can't begin to grasp the depth of that loss.
If we listen to the sound of the whips which lashed across Jesus' back; if we feel the pricks of the thorns driving into his skull on that awful crown and if we allow our muscles to imagine the weight of the cross he had to drag uphill; then we can relate to the suffering Christ endured for us.
Isaiah 53:3-4 The Message takes us back at a look at the one who suffered for us.
The servant grew up before God-a scrawny seedling, a scrubby plant in a parched field. There was nothing attractive about him, nothing to cause us to take a second look. He was looked down on and passed over, a man who suffered, who know pain firsthand. One look at him and people turned away. We looked down on him, thought he was scum. But the fact is, it was our pains he carried-our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us. We thought he brought it on himself, that God was punishing him for his own failures. But it was out sins that did that to him, that ripped and tore and crushed him-our sins! He took the punishment, and that made us whole. Through his bruises we get healed. We're all like sheep who've wandered off and gotten lost. We've all done our own thing, gone our own way. And God has piled all our sins, everything we've done wrong on him, on him.
