life. faithful.

  Who is this man? The Jewish chief priests and elders accuse him of crimes their people say deserve his death, yet he doesn't open his mouth. They say he is claiming to be the King of the Jews, staging a rebellion, yet he just stands there, silent. He listens to the crowd calling out for his crucifixion, be he doesn't defend himself. What kind of man does that? Who is this man, that he just walks like a lamb to slaughter? He is mocked and beaten, spit on and with thorns pressed into his brow--and yet he doesn't resist, doesn't protest, doesn't respond to those mocking him as King. He is offered wine to dull his pain, but he refuses. What kind of man can take such pain? Who is this man, who even when hung on a cross doesn't curse his executioners? Even now as he dies they mock him, yet his only response? " Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they're doing. " He hangs on a cross, yet he promises the criminal beside him that he will be...

Every once in a while, I read a verse of Scripture and think, "I wonder when that got put in there..." because it catches me as something I've never noticed before. As we are nearing the remembrance of Easter, one of those verses caught my attention: " When Jesus was on the earth, a man of flesh and blood, He offered up prayers and pleas, groans and tears to the One who could save Him from death. He was heard because He approached God with reverence. Although He was a Son, Jesus learned obedience through the things He suffered   And once He was perfected through that suffering He became the way of eternal salvation for all those who hear and follow Him" (Hebrews 5:7-9) As they prepared to enter Jerusalem, Jesus knew what He was about to face. He even pulled His disciples aside to tell them plainly (because He had already told them a couple different times and the just didn't get it) that He was about to be mocked, tortured, executed, and raised from the d...

 While I know I can't speak for everyone, but I think it's pretty safe to say that there will come a point in every Christian's life when they feel abandoned by God. That may be shocking to say--after all, we all know all the promises that tell us that God is always with us, that He will never leave us. Even when you are absolutely convinced of the validity of the promises of God, though, there can be times when those promises don't feel true. Being disappointed with God or feeling abandoned by Him is something that it seems the Christian community hushes up and sweeps under the carpet as if it is some dirty secret that shouldn't be mentioned. If we feel like we are distant from God, we must somehow have lost our faith. Or at the very least, in "church talk" (or maybe just "Southern Baptist talk", I don't know) we're back-slidden. We ignore those feeling in ourselves--push them down and try to suppress the slightest twinge. When others s...

The cross--an instrument of execution that was so intense a word was invented just to describe the pain: excruciating. It was a humiliating, agonizing way to die, hanging there exposed to everything and everyone, your death long and drawn out and on display for the jeering crowd. What a terrible way for an innocent man to die. Add to that the taunting and torture Jesus experienced before His death--lashes so severe they often left the victim dead simply because the body can't recover from the combination of shock and blood loss. Slaps and curses and a crown of thorns from Roman soldiers. Struggling to carry a cross down the same streets where, just days before, people had shouted praises and thrown their cloaks down before Him as He entered the city. Looking out at faces full of hatred, at people demanding His life. And on the other faces, fear and confusion as they tried to reconcile this broken, bleeding man with the idea of the conqueror who would save God's people from...

There's no doubt that we are in a strange time right now (though the difference is more pronounced in some places than in others). Outside there seems to be a hush, as if all of creation is holding its breath. It's the beginning of Holy Week, but it isn't unfolding the way so many of us expected. For us, today was going to be the day our church family joined together to commemorate the Passover--though I'm sure it would have looked very different from the dinner Jesus shared with His disciples. If we look back, God so often works in the unexpected. Take today--Palm Sunday. The people of Israel were looking for the Messiah, the Liberating King who would free them from Roman oppression. They were looking for the Conqueror, the Lion of Judah who would rise up and establish the kingdom. They had started to follow this Jesus, a powerful miracle worker who could cast out demons. They were likely recalling the words of the prophets: "Cry out with joy, O daughter o...

Lydia closed her eyes at the strike of the hammer against nail, wishing she could close her ears against the agonized cries. She wasn't supposed to be here. Abba didn't want her to see the crucifixions, and she had never had a desire to go against his wishes in the past. Today, though, something was different. She couldn't get that man's eyes out of her mind. She had gone home after the rooster crowed this morning, trying to forget the prisoner who had been taken before Caiaphas, but that had proven impossible. Neighbors had stopped by to tell her father that Jesus of Nazareth was on trial, speaking in hushed tones of Pharisees and miracles and prophecies. All those things had piqued her curiosity, so when her mother had asked her to go to aunt's to borrow some necessitates before the Sabbath, she found herself drawn to a place she had always avoided. As they lifted the man to the top of a cross, Lydia took note of the sign above his head, placed there so every...