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Tag Archives: Sorrow

Matthew 27:59-61

19 Apr

59 Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a long sheet of clean linen cloth. 60 He placed it in his own new tomb, which had been carved out of the rock. Then he rolled a great stone across the entrance and left. 61 Both Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were sitting across from the tomb and watching.

Matthew 27:59-61

Dear God, as I sit here on this Saturday morning before Easter, the word “hopeless” comes to mind. There are things in my life that bring me sorrow about which I feel hopeless. I’m tired. I’m defeated. I’ve tried multiple times and in multiple ways to remedy the sorrowful situation, but nothing seems to work. It feels hopeless.

I would imagine that is how Joseph and Nicodemus were feeling as they handled Jesus’s body that Friday night, making themselves unclean for the Passover. I would imagine that’s how the Marys and all of Jesus’s other followers/believers, whether close to him or believing in him from a distance, were feeling that Friday evening and Saturday. Hopeless. Asking themselves, “What does this mean? Where do we go from here?” while dealing with their simple grief of losing someone they loved so brutally. Rome was still in charge. Pilate had the power to kill him. Caiaphas and his crew had won. What now?

In today’s entry into Restore: A Guided Lent Journal for Prayer and Meditation, Sister Miriam…well, she says this:

An ancient homily on Holy Saturday captures it best: “What is happening? Today there is a great silence over the earth, a great silence, and stillness, a great silence because the King sleeps; the earth was in terror and was still, because God slept in the flesh and raised up those who were sleeping from the ages. God has died in the flesh, and the underworld has trembled…Truly he goes to seek out our first parent like a lost sheep; he wishes to visit those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death. He goes to free the prisoner Adam and his fellow prisoner Eve from her pains, he who is God, and Adam’s son. The Lord goes in to them holding his victorious weapon, his Cross. When Adam, the first created man, sees him, he strikes his breast in terror and calls out to all: ‘My Lord be with you all.’ And Christ in reply says to Adam: ‘And with your spirit.’ And grasping his hand he raises him up, saying, ‘Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light.'”

Father, I think I want to sit in this silence today. As I’ve been praying, I’ve decided to not “play” anything today. No music. No podcasts. No YouTube videos or sports. I think I want this to be a real day of silence for me. I want to be alone with the Holy Spirit and my thoughts. I want to commune with you without distraction. I want to learn to love you just a little better today. And I want to learn to be at peace in the silence of my sorrow. The silence of my hopelessness. But I have an advantage on Joseph, Nicodemus, the Marys, and all the others. I know what’s about to happen tomorrow, and it gives me hope too.

I pray all of this in Jesus and with your Holy Spirit,

Amen

 
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Posted by on April 19, 2025 in Matthew, Restore: A Guided Lent Journal for Prayer and Meditation

 

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John 5:1-6

01 Apr

5 Afterward Jesus returned to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish holy days. 2 Inside the city, near the Sheep Gate, was the pool of Bethesda, with five covered porches. 3 Crowds of sick people—blind, lame, or paralyzed—lay on the porches. 5 One of the men lying there had been sick for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him and knew he had been ill for a long time, he asked him, “Would you like to get well?”

John 5:1-6

Dear God, off of the top of my head, I can’t think of many or any examples of Jesus proactively approaching the sick person and offering healing. Maybe there are, but when I read this passage this morning, that is what struck me. Maybe this is semantics, but Jesus didn’t say, “May I heal you?” He asked, “Would you like to get well?” Again, maybe I’m reading too much into this and there are cultural norms and customs at play, but the intimation of this verbiage in 21st Century English is that there is a chance the man wanted to stay sick by the pool. It had been his life for 38 years. It would be a lot to take it away. Even though it was awful, it was all he knew.

I have so many analogies running through my head right now for how this can be true of us now. Do I want to give up my sins and follow after you? Well, I’ve gotten kind of used to my sin and this life. The devil I know is better than the life in you that I don’t know. Or when I think of how we are all afraid of death, but I wonder if you don’t see this life for us as the equivalent of us lying by this pool. That’s not to say you don’t have us here and have a role for us here. Our human lives are precious and important. But you have the perspective of what we don’t on the life that is to come. “Don’t be afraid.”

I suppose I should read Sister Miriam’s commentary on this passage from Restored: A Guided Lent Journal for Prayer and Meditation. She focused on being present with you and letting you heal us, and then for us to be present with others, allowing you to flow through us to them.

Father, I have sorrows. I have areas of my heart and soul that need healed. Some are of my own making. Some are things done to me. Some, I can’t tell whose fault it is, mine or someone else’s. But I want to sit with you in this moment and tell you that, yes, I want to be healed. I don’t know what that healing even looks like because I do think sorrow is important sometimes. I think lament is appropriate. I think mourning is appropriate. Jesus even said it is blessed to mourn and to be comforted. So help me to use my sorrow and turn it into comfort for others. I have a friend who’s coming up on the one-year anniversary of his wife passing. Help me to comfort him. Love him through me. Love the people I touch today through me. And use the comforting process to heal my own heart as well.

I pray this in Jesus and with your Holy Spirit,

Amen

 
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Posted by on April 1, 2025 in John, Restore: A Guided Lent Journal for Prayer and Meditation

 

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He Has Borne Our Griefs — Isaiah 53:1-6

28 Feb

IMG_1692
The above image is from Revealed: A Storybook Bible for Grown-Ups by Ned Bustard. The image was created by Ned Bustard and is called “En Agonie (after Rouault).”

Isaiah 53:1-6 [NLT]

1 Who has believed our message?
    To whom has the Lord revealed his powerful arm?
2 My servant grew up in the Lord’s presence like a tender green shoot,
    like a root in dry ground.
There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance,
    nothing to attract us to him.
3 He was despised and rejected—
    a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief.
We turned our backs on him and looked the other way.
    He was despised, and we did not care.

4 Yet it was our weaknesses he carried;
it was our sorrows that weighed him down.
And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God,
a punishment for his own sins!
5 But he was pierced for our rebellion,
crushed for our sins.
He was beaten so we could be whole.
He was whipped so we could be healed.
6 All of us, like sheep, have strayed away.
We have left God’s paths to follow our own.
Yet the Lord laid on him
the sins of us all.

Dear God, in so many ways I feel like a failure. I normally write these at the beginning of each day, but I ran out of time this morning and I was having trouble finding a scripture upon which to meditate, so I just went to work. Then something happened this afternoon that has caused me a lot of sorrow and even some fear. My tendency is to try to push through this pain and solve my problems in my own wisdom. But there is no peace in that. There is usually only foolishness.

So I sat down and opened up my new favorite book to find a Bible story and see what I can learn from how an artist has interpreted this passage. The passage itself is familiar to evangelical Christians, especially charismatic ones. The last part of verse 5 is often translated, “by his stripes we were healed,” and a lot of people praying for healing will quote this passage, although I personally believe they are using it out of context.

Anyway, the part of this passage that struck me this evening was verse 4: “Yet is was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down. And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God, a punishment for his own sins!”

I had someone give me a compliment tonight that I absolutely felt like I did not deserve. He complimented what I consider to be a weakness, and I think if he knew me better he wouldn’t have complimented me at all. In fact, I told him as much. But it was that weakness that Jesus carried too. It was this sorrow I feel tonight that He carried as well. It wasn’t His sin. He had no sin. No, it was all about me and all of us.

Now, I want to turn my attention to the image that Ned Bustard did for this passage. It took me a while to see it, but it’s Jesus on the cross, from the waist up–or maybe just below the waist. It’s rough. Jesus arms are up on the cross, but his head is down. If He is not yet dead, he will be soon. His arm and pectorals are represented as being straight and stretched. There is a small horizontal cross in the middle of His chest. Is that intentional? His abdomen is done in circles as are his nipples. And I think His nakedness is showing. How often we forget that there was no loin cloth for modesty. Our God was hung naked for this sorrow. For my wickedness.

Father, this is the cross at which I am supposed to lay my burdens. This is the cross that is there to hold my sorrows and fears. I’ve been talking to people about how much you did for us last year, and how providential your timing was in some of our needs. Do I believe you can do that again? Am I prepared to seek you as much now as I did then? Well, it starts now. I give you this pain. I pray also for the others involved who are also in pain. Help them. I give you my fear. I pray also for the others involved who are fearful. I give you my worship. I pray that the others involved will worship you as well.

In Jesus’ name I pray,

Amen

 

 
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Posted by on February 28, 2019 in Isaiah, Revealed: A Storybook Bible for Grown-Ups

 

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