Man of Many Sorrows
Isaiah 53:1-3 Who really believed what we heard? Who saw in it the Lord’s great power? He was always close to the Lord. He grew up like a young plant, like a root growing in dry ground. There was nothing special or impressive about the way he looked, nothing we could see that would cause us to like him. People made fun of him, and even his friends left him. He was a man who suffered a lot of pain and sickness. We treated him like someone of no importance, like someone people will not even look at but turn away from in disgust.
No one likes to suffer, but in a spiritual sense, suffering can cause us to take our eye off the ball as we wonder, what the blazes God is up to and why He’s letting this happen to me … ME!
At Christmas we do the whole pantomime, baby Jesus thing and look, there’s nothing wrong with that per se. After all, there’s something wonderful about celebrating a new birth. But just a few months later we gather round the cross for Easter. This baby, thirty-three years on, was beaten, mocked, crucified and dead.
And let’s not forget that along the way, He suffered many sorrows, many rejections, many misunderstandings, even in His own hometown. That would have hurt. The Prophet Isaiah put this way centuries before Jesus was born:
Isaiah 53:1-3 Who really believed what we heard? Who saw in it the Lord’s great power? He was always close to the Lord. He grew up like a young plant, like a root growing in dry ground. There was nothing special or impressive about the way he looked, nothing we could see that would cause us to like him. People made fun of him, and even his friends left him. He was a man who suffered a lot of pain and sickness. We treated him like someone of no importance, like someone people will not even look at but turn away from in disgust.
Yep, Jesus was to be despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering.
I guess when we’re suffering, we kind of look at God sitting there – as He seems to do – in the air-conditioned comfort of Heaven … and we wonder whether He’s even noticed.
When we’re suffering the easiest thing in the world to forget, is that this Jesus knows all about suffering.
That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.
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