Thursday, May 6, 2021
Tuesday, May 17, 2016
Morning Meditations: Are We Okay with the Love-Pain?
As Jesus sacrificed himself to sanctify, so may we, in the church, in marriages, in parenting, in friendships, and in society.
How am I, how are you, how are we intentionally sacrificing, intentionally taking up our cross and following Him to be and to help others be sanctified?
How many of us struggle trying to find ways to make our service that leads to sanctification fit comfortably into our lilves? When it shouldn't fit comfortably?
How many of us are increasingly afraid that our discipleship might start to cost us something in this nation? And we think there is something wrong with that?
His sacrifice hurt. Does ours?
Are we okay with inconvenience?
Discomfort?
Delaying our own desires?
Rejection?
Discrimination?
Hurt?
With suffering for the sake of following after Jesus and getting the gospel to others?
Are we okay with the love-pain?
Many who have gone before us were, and many in places around the world today are.
Jesus defines love as sacrifice. Can it be called a sacrifice if it doesn't hurt somehow? Can it be called love if it doesn't hurt sometimes? Often?
Do we commonly put love in the categories of choosing to go out of our way so far for another...that it hurts? Jesus did! Do we avoid love because it might hurt? Shame on us!
John 15:12-13 This is My commandment, that you love one another as I loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.
Luke 14:27, 33 Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple
. . . So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.
. . . So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.
I Wonder as I Ponder His Shed Blood for Me
I Wonder as I Ponder
His Shed Blood for me…
Easter Meditations and Photo
by
by
Rhonda Wilkinsn 3/26/16
I Wonder as I Ponder
His Shed Blood for me…
Yes, for years
I have imagined it flowing
Down his battered body.
But never have I asked,
“Where did it go,
This precious flow
As it fell from
His back,
His head,
His hands,
His his feet,
His side,
To whatever was below?”
What of the servant girl who washed
His dried blood-drops
Off the courtroom floor?
Was she too outside the temple gate
When Peter and John
Healed the crippled beggar ?
Did she hear the promise that through
Faith in Jesus
Her sins could be wiped clean?
Was she awestruck that her heart
Could be washed of sin
By that very Man’s shed blood
That she washed off the marble floors?
Or what of Simon of Cyrene
Who helped carry Jesus’ cross?
Surely he, too, touched Jesus’ blood.
Was he in the crowd at Pentecost,
Hearing Peter say,
“This man was handed over to you
By God’s set purpose and foreknowledge,
And you,
With the help of wicked men,
Put him to death by nailing him to the cross,
But God raised him from the dead . . .
Because it was impossible
For death to keep its hold on him!”
Simon,who perhaps recalled wiping the
blood that dripped off
The wooden bean onto his brow
And into his eyes,
Was he also “cut to the heart,”
Thinking, “I helped kill the Mesiah?
Why didn’t I refuse when the soldiers
Ordered me to carry His cross?”
“Better I had died than be complicit in the
Death of the Holy One!”
Upon hearing Peter, did he like the others,
Cry out in agony, “What shall we do?”
And in response to Peter’s message,
Did he realize that,
In spite of his strength,
He was totally weak to stand
Before a holy God
Without this very blood?
Wiping his brow,
As he imagined Jesus’ blood on himself again,
Did he fall to his knees in the weakness
Of humility and repentance,
Pray for the forgiveness of sin
And receive baptism
In the name of the Man whose cross
And whose blood he carried?
Jesus’ blood must have spurted onto
The soldiers hands
That held HIim to the cross
And hammered in the nails.
Did their guilt plague them day and night?
Did that image and those sensations
Replay over and over again in their minds?
Were they years later in the church in Rome
together with Jewish and Gentile believers?
Did they hear Paul’s epistle read?
Proclaiming, “We know that our old self
Was crucified with him
So that the body of sin
Might be done away with...
Do not offer the parts of your body to sin,
As instruments of wickedness
But rather offer yourselves to God…
And the parts of your body to him
As instruments of righteousness,”
Did they realize,
As believers
In Jesus’ resurrection,
That because their hands had
Nailed Jesus’ hands to the cross,
Their own criminal hands,
could now be considered
spiritually dead to sin,
Nailed to that cross in union with Christ’s?
Did they look at their hands,
Remembering the warm spray of His blood?
And for the first time, in thankfulness,
Lift up their now holy hands,
As instruments of righteousness,
In praise and sacrifice to the One
Whose blood makes all things new?
Did they at last find peace?
At the cross, as his blood flowed down,
Did it puddle?
Or trickle downhill
In a stream,
That kissed the feet of those who mocked?
The feet of those who literally spat
On His blood?
And then trampled it underfoot?
Did any of those mockers hear Thomas tell
Of how he touched the hands of
The resurrected Jesus?
Felt the wounds in his side, and his feet ?
Did they recall Jesus’ blood
Under their sandaled stance?
Did they hear that skeptical Thomas
Had believed!
Did they respond this time in eager,
Hopeful attentiveness for answers to
An empty tomb?
For assurance that the bodily Jesus
Reportedly seen was not a ghost!
He walked, He ate, and He talked!
He really was victorious over death,
Bodily ressurrection was possible!
Their feet, touched by his blood could die,
But they would ressurrect, and walk again!
Did they remember his words,
“Father forgive them,
For they know not what they do”?
And on hearing Thomas’ testimony,
Did they kneel and receive the forgiveness
The Father had reserved for them?
Were they, lightened from their burden of sin
Feel as if they could fly?
As if their feet had left the earth,
Had lifted them from
The soiled existence
Of mere survival?
Were they told that their stained feet
Could be called “Beautiful”
For carrying forth this Good News?
And what about the soldier
Who gambled and won Jesus’ robe?
For, surely it too was blood-stained.
In spite of attempts to wash it.
Had he set it aside, but then after the resurrection,
Instead, proudly wore it precisely due to the stains?
Having understood the depths of the meaning
Of that blood?
Did he come to understand
That he had been bought
With a far greater price,
Than silver or gold, indeed,
With the precious blood of Jesus?
That he had been clothed with a robe
Of far more value,
The robe of Jesus’ righteousness!
Because Jesus “who knew no sin,
Had been made sin for him.”
Another soldier perhaps, with his cape,
Wiped dry the side-piercing sword
Contaminated with Jesus’ blood
And body fluids.
But some day thereafter,
Did the sword of the Spirit,
The living and powerful Word of God,
Pierce his heart? Did he understand?
That the sword of the Spirit,
The written Word of God,
Need not be cleansed of the atoning blood
For instead of striking to spill blood,
It gives it freely, serving it up as a ransom?
Did he learn that this blood was not one
That could merely dirty his possession,
But a blood that could cleanse him
To make him a possession of his Redeemer?
Did he perceive
That instead of carrying a sword
For bringing intended death,
He could pick up the sword
Of the Word of God
And with it administer life through
Applying the atoning blood
Intended to bring forth life?
And that not a temporal life of
Of corruptible human seed,
But of the incorruptible seed of the Spirit?
So that as a mortal, he and others
Could put on immortality?
Did Jesus’ blood splatter on,
Drip down,
And then flow,
Seemingly in
Unreal
Slow
Motion
Between the grass blades
And winding ivy beneath the cross
While those who loved Him
Began to dispair
As they watched him make
No effort to rescue himself?
But, instead,
Become weaker and weaker
To the point of seemingly no return?
With heart-wrenching sobs of great grief
Did they rub the blood stained ivy leaves
On their faces,
Their hands,
Or roll in them, in anguish,
As if by doing so
They could somehow miracously
Trade places with Him
And restore their healer,
Their prophet, and King
Back to the destiny
That they had been sure was his to claim?
But would not his death,
So galiantly applauded
by the midday darkness,
The thunder, and the earthquake,
Demand such awestruck wonder
That only after he was carried away
Would one dare to ignore all laws
Of ceremonial cleanliness and respectfully
Treasure away home
One solitary bloodstained leaf?
As proof that he really was,
That He really had existed?
That his death was horrifically true?
Did they come to know
That there was much more
Than a token of his blood available?
That there was the eternal testimony
Of the eternal fountain of his shed blood
That once applied to them
Through faith in its efficacy to forgive
Would bring them into sweet relationship
With Him, and into the fellowship
Of his sufferings, of his death,
And of the power of his resurrection?
Forever He would speak,
“No condemnation,” on their behalf!
And not only on theirs,
but on behalf of all who believed.
And alas, those who carried his body
To the the tomb
And prepared him for burial.
As these men washed Jesus’ blood
From their bodies,
Did they realize
That by the power of that shed blood
To forgive, to cleanse them,
Jesus would one day
Carry their fallen bodies
Out of the grave to glory?
Up to and down
from Calvary Hill it fell,
A blood like no other sacrifice beheld.
It stained the marbled floors,
The sweaty brow,
The sandaled feet,
The calloused hands,
The seamless robe,
The soldier’s sword,
The grassy hill,
The ivy still,
The trodden ground,
The friends,
Carrying Him
Tombward bound
To all who were touched
And embraced in their hearts
Its renown,
We know
Grace upon Grace
Did surely abound.
Much more than a token
It can hardly be spoken,
For it cleansed them,
Humbled them,
Forgave them,
United them,
Renewed them,
Kissed them
With eternity.
Forgave them,
Bought them,
Ransomed them,
Rebirthed them, and
Ushered them Heavenbound.
It
proved
Him.
And…if not they
Whom I imagine,
Then many, many like them
Learned to hold his blood so dear
Do you?
Do I?
A blood that when held dearly
Held them, too.
Does it hold you?
Does it hold me?
It can touch us
It can rescue us
It can hold us into eternity
Wherever we are found.
I wonder
As I ponder
Where it did go,
This precious flow of
His shed blood for me?
How much more now
Do I behold it
In all its superiority! 
Background passage declaring the superiority of the Blood of Jesus:
Hebrews 10:1-10 English Standard Version (ESV)
For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near.
2 Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins?
3 But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. 4 For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.
5 Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said,
“Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired,
but a body have you prepared for me;
6
in burnt offerings and sin offerings
you have taken no pleasure.
7
Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God,
as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.’”
8 When he said above, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law),
9 then he added, “Behold, I have come to do your will.” He does away with the first in order to establish the second.
10 And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
11 And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins.
12 But when Christ[b] had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God,
13 waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet.
14 For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.
15 And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after saying,
16
“This is the covenant that I will make with them
after those days, declares the Lord:
I will put my laws on their hearts,
and write them on their minds,”
17 then he adds,
“I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.”
18 Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.
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