Last week someone told me the story of a young girl who struggled with self-esteem and a feeling of ugliness. In her desperation she had an encounter with Jesus who said "You think you're ugly, let me show you ugly!", and He took her to see Himself as He hung on the cross, all bleeding and broken. It was her place of identification and healing!
The cross will be whatever we need from Him because He has accomplished everything through it. For me the outstretched arms, nailed to rough hard timber, simply enfold me. It is beyond logic and reason and real enough to sustain me through the greatest crisis.
My prayer today is that the healing, redemptive victory of the cross would be powerful in each of us over this Easter time. That we would be released from the things that hold us captive, even the things so familiar we don't see them, and we would become all You created us to be Lord.
It seemed the hard wooden structure and the sin of men had claimed You. Divine life nailed, bleeding and lifeless, to the cross. Warmth growing cold. But from Your side blood and water flowed together - redeeming sacrifice and the river of life side by side. Death brought rest and You were taken down, tenderly wrapped, and placed in a quiet empty cave. It was after pain and death, and from rest, that You stood up in new life!
You ARE the Way.
Teach us Your processes and how to live and walk in them with You, letting go of the hard structures of this world that would hold us captive. Teach us how to lay down in rest and to let You raise us up, alive and refreshed in You.
The price has been paid, the new life flows.
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