We were there
This fresh set of Daily Devotions is being provided for our LCA/NZ family, friends and visitors to help us to keep our eyes on Jesus as we face unsettling times. They can be used by families and individuals as part of the LCA/NZ’s Church@Home resources to encourage us and build trust in our Heavenly Father during this season of uncertainty and physical isolation.
by Pastor Robin Stelzer
Click here for your printable verse to carry with you today.
‘He was wounded and crushed for our sins. He was beaten that we might have peace’ (Isaiah 53:5).
Read Isaiah 53:1-6
I have seen many deaths – from infant polio children to the last heart beat of a suicide. But nothing could be more disturbing than this death. There is reason to avoid the movie The Passion of the Christ – too raw to inflict the memory files of many of us. No other death reveals such brutality, cruelty or hatred in our human heart. There is a dark insanity at work in our nature.
Yet the record of Jesus Christ with merciful love for us holds the event of the cross as paramount and unavoidable. History screams from this Friday 2000 years ago. To turn our eyes away is to shrug off a far worse virus than anything medical science has ever faced. Today we stand before the awful cross. Here the life of Christ was tortured from him; he whose love blazed brighter than any other in the pages of history. This was no story gone wrong. This was his plan, why he came.
This day is most illustrated by art, written by literature, dramatised, filmed, sung, orchestrated, worn as gold, raised on steeples. Yet I dare not watch as a bystander. I take my terrible place here. I am the mother broken, the disciple betraying, the healed one confused, the crowd shouting, the pastors mocking, the soldier nailing. I am here in my dark insanity of evil, my sin.
Here I meet Jesus of the cross. How I hate this! How it disturbs me. Yet this is my only hope, my virus cure.
We were there. Thank God, for this day is our only hope.
Lord, take me to the scene which I flee. Let me see in your suffering the truth about my plague. Let me be brought to my lowest before you, whom I have crucified. Take me to this place of darkness, humbled for my only hope, the vaccine of new life. This day is not for my misery, but to end my misery, my fear, my guilt. Ready me for the dawn to come, the Son-rise of your love for us all. Make us your instruments of Good News, your cross for us. Amen.
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