DON’T TURN AWAY

“He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him; nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces He was despised, and we held Him in low esteem. Surely He took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered Him punished by God, stricken by Him, and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on Him, and by His wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.”  (Isaiah 53:2b-6 NIV)

Most of us don’t like to face bad news. We turn off the television when a sensitive story is told. We ask to be spared the details when an injury or death is described. For whatever reason, we would rather avoid hearing or knowing the truth if it isn’t pretty.

One of the reasons that Lent is so important is that it requires us to come face to face with the graphic and painful death of Jesus. We would rather jump right over the suffering of Good Friday and go directly to Easter. But we cannot. We must watch Jesus die.

It may have been the Jews who placed Jesus upon the cross, but it was our sin that drove the nails into His hands and feet. It was our voices that cried out “Crucify Him!” It was for us that He died, and He did it willingly, so that we might live.  

-- Steven Molin, from the “Cypress Lake UMC Lenten Devotional 2004”

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