Sometimes life all crashes in at once, after the darkness lifts. All the griefs of the world, untold, are wrought afresh, known anew. We each know our own griefs.
What--to carry that so alone, as He did? Our Savior wept? Our Maker suffered? Our Creator died, as in the flesh? He humbled Himself to take on flesh, tabernacled among us, and we despised Him. Yet He despised the shame, as beneath notice. He counted the suffering nothing for the joy set before Him. That we should so loathe Him, though, as to refuse to honor Him with our lives?
How is there any greater tragedy? Seeing those created in His image full of hatred and reviling--every breath a curse, every inclination of the heart only evil? This--which was created to enjoy and glorify Him--reviling Him, instead? What is WRONG with us??? How could we do this?
And we slaughter the innocent for commerce. The most vulnerable, their lives are merchandise, bodies ripped to shreds and they surely would scream, if not muffled by the shroud of the womb. Do you know pain so severe you cannot utter sound?
What have we done? What have we become? We traded His glory, and now we are the agents of our own genocide, even now so far as to sterilize ourselves en masse, most likely. Or, at the least, trading the natural for the unnatural increasingly, as to do likewise. We could be pitied for the incomprehensible depths of our abject idiocy, quite foolishness, except that we have done this to ourselves.
What have we DONE?
I am not innocent. Only by God's grace has He elected to preserve and deliver me, having set His love upon me, foreknown and predestined.
I hate this, in myself, which still seeks such defiance and is so prone to self-pity, and self-indulgence. Selfishness. Loathsome, and yet, I am of that. But for grace, wholly so. Yet Jesus has made a way. In spite of me.
We are so ignorant and foolish, though. He paid the price for us, that we could be delivered from that very hell we deserve, into His eternal life and love. And yet, we spurn Him. I hate this. He is all which is good and holy and pure and loving and kind, and yet we spurn Him, treating His love as paltry fare.
We ought to be incinerated. The whole lot.
I wonder, too, on what it was in the days of Noah, that every turning of their heart was only to do evil. How far are we from that, truly? Each turn further from grace, into judgment--being let to have that which we want, defying Him His due worship...
...every turn further, how much further? I hear of things which I can't even tolerate to consider, from and of the leaders of our foremost nations. Even knowing, but His restraining arm, His grace, there could and might so go I...
...and I cannot fathom what we have become. Those things which were the worst of the judgments on God's people, a pastime. And even then, still not the worst.
There is nothing left undone, is there? I don't want to know. But just to realize....something of the magnitude of travesty at hand.
Travesty does not approach unto the reality. That word is nearly meaningless, attempting to convey the abject horror of what is being denied, as His due. He is worthy. We are created to glorify Him. What have we done?
And yet, I know that He will be glorified. Though some fitted for ignoble use will glorify through their destruction, which even still for this moment is such a grief, given the honor it is to bear His image.
I am glad that the Lord allows only partial knowledge of the darkness, now. And more the grief, to have dwelt in it so flagrantly for a time...to have known and reveled in defiance against the Only, Wise God. To think His eyes should endure, long-suffering, awaiting that moment of fully enacting justice?...enduring, for this while, even perhaps that others will be saved, and whatever else His reasons besides...? That He would bear these?
He sees and knows all. Nothing is hidden from Him. Nothing. Knowing no fear of God, doing in secret what will someday be announced from the rooftops unto perdition...He will be glorified.
I didn't understand until today, what this yearning and grief was. For His glory. Our God is glorious. He deserves all praise and loving obedience, for His is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever.
Personal griefs just don't compare. But then, in His mercy and kindness, He doesn't even spurn them.
What God is this, who would humble Himself, take on flesh, and suffer amongst us? Be rejected and humiliated and beaten and torn? Serving, loving, up until the very end--ever seeking His own, that they would be preserved and given new life. Even in that last, not seeking His own deliverance, but ours. Do you not recognize something of the incomprehensibility of a love like that? He laid down His life. He endured. The very wrath justly set upon us all, He endured. That is a horror beyond all horrors, a travesty beyond all travesty, which He willingly undertook and accomplished, in order that we would have a space for mercy, that sin could be passed over.
It is the Passover, you know? He gave Himself. He is the Lamb. He is the Good Shepherd. And He is the Lamb. Jesus Christ, Eternal God, Everlasting Father, Immanuel. Ben-David, Ben-Joseph. He has come. And He accomplished all the good will of the Father. He satisfied every righteous demand of the law. All of them. Perfectly, in loving obedience. His entire heart, soul, mind--loving God, the Father.
3He was despised and rejectedb by men,
a man of sorrowsc and acquainted withd grief;e
and as one from whom men hide their facesf
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
4Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
5But he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds we are healed.
6All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
7He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he opened not his mouth.
8By oppression and judgment he was taken away;
and as for his generation, who considered
that he was cut off out of the land of the living,
stricken for the transgression of my people?
9And they made his grave with the wicked
and with a rich man in his death,
although he had done no violence,
and there was no deceit in his mouth.
10Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him;
he has put him to grief;g
when his soul makesh an offering for guilt,
he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;
the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.
11Out of the anguish of his soul he shall seei and be satisfied;
by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,
make many to be accounted righteous,
and he shall bear their iniquities.
12Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many,j
and he shall divide the spoil with the strong,k
because he poured out his soul to death
and was numbered with the transgressors;
yet he bore the sin of many,
and makes intercession for the transgressors.
Psalm 53
שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל; "Hear, O Israel" He is One: our God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. He is One being, with three persons, infinite in might and majesty. Power belongs to Him. All praise to His Name.
9Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout in triumph, O Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your King comes to you, righteous and victorious, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. 10And I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the horse from Jerusalem, and the bow of war will be broken. Then He will proclaim peace to the nations. His dominion will extend from sea to sea, and from the Euphrates to the ends of the earth.
Zephariah 9:9-10
When our glorious King returns, His second advent, this verse will be fully so. He is come and He will.
Prepare your hearts to seek Him, then.
1Why do the nations ragea
and the peoples plot in vain?
2The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the LORD and against his Anointed, saying,
3“Let us burst their bonds apart
and cast away their cords from us.”
4He who sits in the heavens laughs;
the Lord holds them in derision.
5Then he will speak to them in his wrath,
and terrify them in his fury, saying,
6“As for me, I have set my King
on Zion, my holy hill.”
7I will tell of the decree:
The LORD said to me, “You are my Son;
today I have begotten you.
8Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,
and the ends of the earth your possession.
9You shall breakb them with a rod of iron
and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”
10Now therefore, O kings, be wise;
be warned, O rulers of the earth.
11Serve the LORD with fear,
and rejoice with trembling.
12Kiss the Son,
lest he be angry, and you perish in the way,
for his wrath is quickly kindled.
Blessed are all who take refuge in him.
Psalm 2
There is no other way. Either we repent or we perish--righteously condemned for our egregious treason of refusing to honor and glorify our Holy, Just, Good, and Loving God.
Fear Him and live. Repent, and believe on the One whom the Father has sent. Otherwise, you will perish in your sins. There is no other way.
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