Man of Sorrows

"Man of sorrows what a name

for the Son of God, who came

ruined sinners to reclaim:

Hallelujah, what a Saviour"

So says the old hymn picking up the theme from Isaiah 53.

Isaiah 53:3-6

He was despised and rejected—    a Man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief.

We turned our backs on Him and looked the other way.    

He was despised, and we did not care.

Yet it was our weaknesses He carried;

    it was our sorrows that weighed Him down.

And we thought His troubles were a punishment from God,  a punishment for His own sins!

But He was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins.

He was beaten so we could be whole.  He was whipped so we could be healed.

All of us, like sheep, have strayed away.    

We have left God’s paths to follow our own.

Yet the Lord laid on Him the sins of us all.

Yesterday, I had a call from someone recently bereaved. That person, who had put all his trust in his wife, had nowhere to turn for comfort.

The pain of loss and loneliness bit into his soul so sharply, like a ravenous wolf, eating him alive.

So much so that he didn't want to live anymore.

Who can empathise with such savage, bitter pain?

Grief, such as that, is a prison of aching despair.

Only Jesus is qualified and can enter into that deep chasm of sadness.

He got to know, intimately, and to share, the bitterest grief and sorrow.

There's not a tear that He hasn't shed, not an anguish He hasn't felt and drank to the dregs.

Meditating on this amazing prophecy of The Passion of Jesus, I realised afresh the miracle of The Cross.

Jesus took it ALL. on Himself, ALL human misery and sorrow.

No wonder He sweat great drops of blood as He agonised in Gethsemane!

As He writhed for hours on the Cross He was bearing and sharing the sins and sorrows of all of us, individually.

We finite humans can't enter into a person's particular torment, but Jesus can!

He can walk through closed doors, and, as we pray and share we can point hurting people to Him.