Friday, April 14, 2006
"Your Will...Not Mine"
In this season of Lent allow me to deviate this Holy Friday from my customary "Week Past" blog entries to share this link that I received from a high school batchmate. It describes, much like a medical examiner doing an autopsy, on how much Christ sufffered as foretold in Isaiah 53.
If you knew the suffering you would have to undergo to save somebody worthless would you do it?
Christ knew the horrific ordeal he would go through and begged his Father: "If you could take take this cup of suffering from me! Yet not what I want, but what you want."Matthew 26:30.
But he did it! He faced the dreadful agony to save us worthless sinners. He did it for Peter who denied him three times and for Judas the traitor. The difference was Peter asked for forgiveness while Judas hanged himself. He did it for the two thief that was crucified with him. The difference was one asked for forgiveness while the other taunted and ridiculed him. Yet he never said anything against the unrepentant thief and quickly acknowledged the remorseful one.
Perhaps because of it's simplicity it is hard for us to believe that this is all he ask from us in exchange for his suffering and death: to believe and repent.
The door is eternally open to welcome us in. Let us not be like Judas and the unrepentant thief.
