Man of Sorrows

While preparing to sing a song for our church’s Christmas Eve Service, I felt the need to ask God to help me feel the deeper meaning of the words that I was preparing to sing, that I may more completely convey its message.

The song, written by my daughter, speaks of Rachel weeping for her children who are no more, refusing to be comforted (Matthew 2:18 and Jeremiah 31:15).

God answered my prayer. 

The path of my awareness converged suddenly and intensely with His, as if my very soul was a piece of cloth dipped into the dye of His tears…

   …sharing tears with a grocery store clerk who recently lost her husband

   …sharing tears with a dear friend who felt lonely and unable to be near her children

   …groping for words to encourage a friend who is caring for her mother as she yields to cancer

   …stunned to silence by a news article reporting someone I knew in town who took his own life

   …trying to find words to encourage a friend feeling the pressure of loneliness while approaching some major decisions

   …feeling helpless and being uncertain how to help loved ones make a significant life change

   …observing several elderly people in a rest home move in slow motion, their bodies functioning with difficulty

   …listening with bewilderment as intelligent men discuss their atheistic world view as if with authority

   …reading, with a heavy heart, an e-mail from a friend who is struggling to celebrate Christmas with her son in the wake of her husband’s death

Until I felt just this small portion of the weight of His sorrow, I may have simply spoken words as I prayed for each of them.  But there are no words…

Mothers were left weeping in excruciating grief as their little ones were torn from their arms and systematically murdered in order to reassure King Herod that his throne would not be usurped.  Yet God plucked His Own Little One from the very midst of this most horrific accomplishment of evil and prepared the Way of Life.

Unspeakable sorrow… overwhelmed by inexpressible hope.

Contrast of death and life, of grief and rejoicing, of despair and anticipation is so powerfully vivid.

Hope in the midst of despair;

solid immovable Hope;

Hope which cannot be dominated… 

this Hope “became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14) 

Is this not the Christmas message?

“He was despised and forsaken of men, 

a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief...”

                           ~ Isaiah 53:3