Last Night...

He was wounded for

Our

Transgressions...

He was bruised for

Our

Iniquities...

All our punishment was upon

Him...

And by His stripes...

We...

Are Healed.

Those are the words to chorus of the song my Mom and I sang at my church's Good Friday service last night.  After eating a bit of bread and sipping a small glass of juice and remembering... amidst the dimmed lights and burning candles... looking up at a tall, wooden cross with a crown made of twisted vines hanging upon it, we sang the words from Isaiah 53.   How thankful I am for the cross.  How amazing that Jesus would love the sin-filled, God-rejecting world enough to die...  to die the death of crucifixion.  And not only that, but to bear the weight of every sin ever committed and ever to be committed.  To carry the weight of God's wrath and then to experience the wrenching pain of His Father's ever-watching eye turning away from Him in this time of the greatest suffering in the history of our world.  And for ME He did this.

Amazing love... how can it be... that You, my King, would die for me?

I don't know how it can be!  But I will never be able to express how thankful I am that it DID happen... and how changed my life is as a result.  My life here and my life after death are eternally altered because of Christ's act of love. 

And... praise God... the story doesn't end in death!  I didn't sit in a pew last night to remember the sacrifice of my dead Savior.  Christ was not simply a martyr for His cause...  NO!!!  For, as Jesus promised His disciples, He would have to suffer death... but He would also have to rise from the dead.

I can't wait to celebrate that truth with my church family tomorrow...  but I pray that I will never cease to celebrate the hope I have in my risen Lord every single day!

I hope you are all having a blessed weekend!
God bless!