The Hill...Psalm 22
Has it ripped you?
The Prince torn by savage hate
His kindness mocked
His priestly weight?
Beneath a Mother weeps
While placed in friend’s kind care.
A thief beside the Cross
Encounters Paradise there.
TYPE TO ENTER A CAPTION.
And holy lords rant vengeance
For every threat to fake faith’s sham
Messiah clearly God’s One Lamb
Whose blood absolves each sin
Look upon this!
Weep and win.
Consider reverently Hebrews 10
This is the transaction no one saw coming. The Word says that they were astonied / astonished. A simple, poor Man with an ethic thought to be totally unworkable in an Age of oppression, deceit, compromise and manipulation.
But Jesus spoke of love, self-denial, compassion, the extra mile, generosity, absorbing the assault. Heaven’s goal above all else.
He was too astute for their scheming questions. He pulled out the rug from beneath their innumerable traditions and rules. He called them whited sepulchres, vipers and hypocrites. He won the hearts of the hungry, longing people. He had to be removed.
The High Priest said that it was expedient that one man should die for the sake of the people. Otherwise the Roman occupiers would smell insurrection, and punish the whole Nation.
The arrest was easy. The Prisoner was totally submissive. He died upon a suffocating perch of dread and humiliation. A Cross, just like so many Hebrew victims. And that was the end of it all. Wasn’t it?
Morning of Delight
The followers hid
The Jews got rid
Of every hope His
Sermons had inspired.
Eleven in despair
Stripped of His sweet care
Where gone the ministry
They had all desired?
But Mary arrived
Claimed their Lord survived
And met her at the sunrise
Just as prophets required.
And Evil lost the day
Delight replaced dismay
New energies of Grace
For saints once lost and tired.
Into Our Stuff
Just once in all our human flood Perfection took on flesh and blood And left a Heavenly throne He came into a dusty land And clung unto a Hebrew band To make their plight His own. A precious, faithful lass His door As once the prophet said before Omitting sin’s seed sown. And He held title to our pain And sampled every mortal strain And for our sin atoned. Oh let the halls of worship ring This Carpenter our God and King And we no more alone. Ascended, where from whence He came Messiah then His hard-earned name And all of Love’s Plan shown.