“Acquainted With Grief"

The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…

"Acquainted With Grief"

    To create a vast and complex universe, God spoke.  To redeem sinful and wayward human hearts, however, He bled.

    "He spake and it was done.  He commanded, and it stood fast" (Psalm 33:9).

    "But God commendeth His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8).

    Interestingly, sacrifice characterized both processes of God's working.  He created all things in full foreknowledge that He would one day be required to smite the Lord Jesus with wrath, forsakenness, and death in order to rescue human hearts.  Thus, Scripture refers to our Savior as "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" (Revelation 13:8).  Our Heavenly Father then fulfilled the terrible necessity at Calvary when the Son of His love became the sin of His judgment.  "He hath made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him" (II Corinthians 5:21).  Sacrifice.  Every human being knows to some degree the meaning of the word, and the experience of its challenge.  But no one begins to know the excruciating reality as does God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  From creation to the cross, sorrow lines the pathways of our Lord's creative and redemptive journey.

    We do well to realize this about our wondrous Lord.  He knows.  He knows the trail of tears that often characterizes the fallen world in which we live, and the imprints of grief left upon our hearts.  As the writer of Hebrews declares, the Lord Jesus is "touched with the feeling of our infirmities" (Hebrews 4:15).  We therefore approach the throne of grace upon which sits a God who not only sympathizes with our challenges.  He empathizes as well, in full awareness of what it means to hurt, lose, bleed, suffer, and die.  Such awareness leads us in truth.  We know the Lord as He is.  It also leads us in access, making it far more likely we will cast our cares upon One who knows better than do we ourselves what it means to hurt.  This is the God of creation and redemption, the God of Scripture, and the God who presently beckons us to trust He can abundantly provide comfort because He fully knows what it means to require comfort.

"He is… a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief."

(Isaiah 53:3)

"Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort."

(II Corinthians 1:3-4)

Weekly Memory Verse

      But God commendeth His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

 (Romans 5:8).

  

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