Catholic church of Chania ( Crete ). Church portal with palm fronds as Easter decoration.
Good morning, beloved,
Well, we made it back home yesterday! 🙂 We have an amazing week ahead of us, friends. A week to take the eyes off of ourselves, our circumstances, our hearts, and focus on our Savior..can we do it? Can we spend this next week, Holy Week, in adoration, in wonder, in speculation at all that has been done on our behalf? I am humbled to even try to blog through this next week but Lord, this servant longs to experience this week with you..I,”24O unhappy and pitiable and wretched man that I am! Who will release and deliver me from [the shackles of] this body of death? 25O thank God! [He will!] through Jesus Christ (the Anointed One) our Lord! So then indeed I, of myself with the mind and heart, serve the Law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.
I’m already getting ahead of myself here…yet one more…1THEREFORE, [there is] now no condemnation (no adjudging guilty of wrong) for those who are in Christ Jesus, who live [and] walk not after the dictates of the flesh, but after the dictates of the Spirit.(A)
2For the law of the Spirit of life [which is] in Christ Jesus [the law of our new being] has freed me from the law of sin and of death.
WOOOOHOOO! This is the hero of our story. Jesus!
So as you read Isaiah 53, you read about our hero. This is the true hero. All the comic books, movie stars, idols..they have NOTHING on Jesus. Nothing. There are so few words that never grow old, right? Amen… read on…
2For [the Servant of God] grew up before Him like a tender plant,
Tender shoots of rose apple
and like a root out of dry ground;
Dried roots of Gentiana lutea
He has no form or comeliness [royal, kingly pomp], that we should look at Him, and no beauty that we should desire Him.
Jesus
3He was despised and rejected and forsaken by men, a Man of sorrows and pains, and acquainted with grief and sickness; and like One from Whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we did not appreciate His worth or have any esteem for Him.
Garden of Gethsemane - where Jesus prayed before the Passion
4Surely He has borne our griefs (sicknesses, weaknesses, and distresses) and carried our sorrows and pains [of punishment], yet we [ignorantly] considered Him stricken, smitten, and afflicted by God [as if with leprosy].(B)
5But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our guilt and iniquities; the chastisement [needful to obtain] peace and well-being for us was upon Him, and with the stripes [that wounded] Him we are healed and made whole.
Ponder Him. Praise Him. Here is a map of His last week, beloved.
http://www.ccel.org/bible/phillips/CNM09-LastWeek.gif if that doesn’t work…
http://www.ccel.org/bible/phillips/CP051GOSPELMAPS.htm
When your week overwhelms you, dive into the Word with focusing on His suffering. For by His wounds, you are healed…
Pray on, beloved child of God. Pray on.
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