Orange Moon Wednesday, January 19, 2021 "Still"

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

"Still"   

    

    "Hide Thy face from my sins" (Psalm 51:9).

    God answered David's prayer a millennia from the time he prayed it.

   "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" (Matthew 27:46).

    God hid His face from David's sins by turning away from the Lord Jesus Christ who bore them on the cross of Calvary.  The Son of His love became the sin of His wrath.  

    "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).  

    The Apostle Paul proclaimed Christ becoming human as a great mystery (I Timothy 3:16).  Might we consider Christ "made… to be sin" an ever greater enigma?  Indeed, wonder beyond wonders staggers our minds to contemplate the Lord Jesus bearing our sins (I Peter 2:24).  How do we even approach wonder when Paul declares our Savior to have become sin?  This transports the matter of our Lord's sacrifice to a place so beyond our understanding that we cannot even begin to journey there.  Indeed, any time I attempt to speak or write about this, a roadblock appears in my imagination.  "Do Not Enter!"  I see the barricade every time I think about the Lord Jesus becoming everything He was not in order to make us everything we were not.

   So, what do we do when we turn the page in our Bibles to find II Corinthians 5:21 displaying its mystery to our hearts and minds?  How do we respond to God hiding His face from our sins not by turning away from us, but by turning away from His Son who became our sin?  Even as I type the question, a deep sense of restraint and stillness settles within my heart.  What thoughts could we think that would be worthy of contemplating what happened at Calvary?  What thanksgivings would suffice to be offered?  How low might we bow our hearts, knees, and faces to humble ourselves in the presence of a truth for which even eternity will not allow a response that begins to be adequate?

   "O the depths of the wisdom and knowledge of God!  How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!" (Romans 11:33).

   Surely, the cross will forever serve as the most unsearchable of God's judgments, and the most past finding out of His ways.  Just as surely, the mystery of our Lord's sacrifice somehow shines the brightest light upon the marvel of who and what He is.  Stillness of heart and mind serves as our only and best response to "made to be sin for us."  Who is God?  Look to Calvary, where the greatest of all mysteries opens a portal through which we look into the darkness, and gaze upon the brightest of all lights and glories.

"We did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted."

(Isaiah 53:4)

"Be still, and know that I am God."

(Psalm 46:10)

"The Light shineth in darkness."

(John 1:5)

Weekly Memory Verse

   Call unto Me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.

(Jeremiah 33:3)

  

 

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