TWO Day Two | February 23 Su ering Servant

“He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and a icted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.”

Isaiah

Our Lenten journey began with ashes – and with good cause. They are the reminders of our own mortality, symbols of our own pain and loss and fragility. They are last year’s palms that’ve met the flames only to wilt and droop and scorch from the heat. Against such fiery orange adversity, the green cannot endure. It withers. It chars. It becomes sooty black. But even there, in the disintegrating ugliness, beauty emerges: a sacred purpose, a holy use. It is the very promise of Scripture: that God trades beauty for ashes (Isaiah 61:3).

It’s not a fair trade, to be sure. But God doesn’t count the cost. He only counts the consequence. He only counts the lives that are changed and the souls that are saved by the grace He came to give. But it was a gift purchased in the currency of su ering: redemption in the coinage of pain. Forty tempting days. Thirty silver shekels. Twenty-four dirty feet. One rugged cross.

Beyond every expectation of who the Messiah was “supposed” to be, Jesus came as a Man of sorrows, as One acquainted with grief and rejection. He came not as One immune from pain, but as One empowered to transform it. For it was in su ering that Jesus redeemed su ering – all su ering: in mind and body and soul. From the inside, He knew how it felt. And that, too, is good news. It means that God knows what to do about loss. It means that God knows what to do about grief. It means that God knows what to do about fear and loneliness and the dire emptiness that we so often feel.

It is good news because it’s perhaps the most ancient question asked by humankind: “Why do we have to su er?” If God is so good and heaven so kind, then why is there such pain and needless violence around us (and within us)? If God is so loving and heaven so sublime, then why do hearts break with such godless regularity and why do we know the salty taste of our tears?

These are questions that defy answers – at least, from the outside of su ering – for empty words provide little relief when shouted from a distance. And to cling to the hope that God really is good and all-powerful seems, sometimes, to be impossible. It is the reality of the human condition. It is the tidal wave that grows from Eden’s ripple.

But Jesus never distanced Himself from su ering. He entered it willingly. For you and for me, He entered it. And conquered it. And rose beyond it to give us hope. To give us healing. To give us peace. He carried our sorrows because we weren’t strong enough. He carried our fears because we weren’t brave enough. It was from inside the storm that Jesus tamed the waves. It was from inside the darkness that Jesus showed the light. For it is this Messiah – anointed by blood and water flowing down – who o ers us a way, not to avoid pain and trial and temptation, but a way to overcome them from the inside.