You know how our immature little hearts
like to think that we have endured worse things than anyone else? Even seniors
are known to compete over whose surgery wins the award for worst experience
ever. We want our good stuff to be the best and our bad experiences to be the worst
as if we gain our status from what we have gone through.
Today it has been a special ministry to me
to face the Lord Jesus Christ who knows the best and the worst more intensely
than I can imagine.
Think about it. As the image of the
invisible God and the radiance of his glory, living in the eternal realm with
his Father where they share the fullness of joy and pleasures of attachment
that continue forever, Jesus knows the perfection of love and joy and peace
beyond our capacity to feel or comprehend.
On the other hand, when Jesus was “despised
and rejected by men,”[1] the
extreme contrast between what he deserved and what he received was so
unthinkably huge that I am in wonder at the divine seashore knowing I can never
fathom the depths of what this would feel like.
I think of the eternal Son of God who
radiates “joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory”[2]
coming into our world to experience life as “a man of sorrows and acquainted
with grief,” and my mind is blown trying to understand such an extreme
contrast of experience.
When I know that the Lord Jesus Christ is
the way that God would “make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you,”
and the one through whom he would “lift up his countenance upon you and give
you peace,”[3]
and yet he would be “as one from whom men hide their faces,” I know I am
in the presence of greater injustice than I have ever experienced.
And, to have the One who “has made
everything beautiful in its time,”[4]
experience being “despised, and we esteemed him not,” puts the brain
into shock with the horror of the discrepancy. How is it possible that the one who
has given humanity the best of what it has ever known then experience from
humanity such a lack of esteem for who he is and what he has done that we would
sink to the extreme of despising him? How is that possible?!!!
And now I grapple with this wonder, that
such a Savior as this has “searched me and known me.”[5] So when he finds that I despise him by preferring
my dusty reflections to his eternally glorious thoughts, he has already felt
being despised to such an extreme that I can know my sin of scorning him is
forgiven.
When he investigates
my soul and sees the attachment-pain of one who has been despised and rejected
of other specks of dust, he feels such real knowingness of what that feels like
that my tiny experience of heartache is comforted by his superabounding love
and grace and mercy.
I tremble
to even let myself consider such a thing, but when he who searches hearts and
minds sees into my hidden places where I feel like a man of sorrows and
acquainted with grief, and he reveals himself to me as one who has felt and
experienced these things more intensely than I can imagine, I feel the comfort
of not only the divine God who is perfect in his overflowing sympathies, but
this wonder of reality that Jesus KNOWS WHAT I FEEL LIKE!!!
The horrifying thing is that Jesus is still
“despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief”.
People are still hiding their faces from him as if he is contemptible. They
still despise him instead of giving him the esteem he deserves as Creator,
Savior and Lord.
What comes over my soul in a fresh way is
that Jesus wants me to feel him sharing in my heartaches as the man of sorrows
who is acquainted with any kind of grief I have experienced, so that I can “rejoice
insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad
when his glory is revealed.”[6]
And the reason I can share in Christ’s
sufferings now with my hope set on the day that Jesus’ glory is revealed is
because he has already spoken to me the things that will cause his joy to flow
into me and my joy to be filled to the full,[7]
and one day soon I will enter into the joy of my Master forever.
© 2021 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the
English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text
Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of
Good News Publishers.)
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