Today’s Reflection
WHEN JESUS SUFFERED and died on the cross, God bore the sin and suffering of the world. By giving his life to the bitter end, Jesus shared the fate of all innocent victims of inhumanity. He took the suffering of the world upon himself. He absorbed the agony of broken hearts and twisted lives. …
Second Corinthians 4:5-6 was the favorite text of my theological mentor, Robert Cushman, and I can hear his often repeated words in my mind to this day: “The only authentic Christian life is a cruciform life.” In an “if-it-feels-good-it’s right” world, the glory of the cross makes little sense. But to the hurt, the abused, the wounded, and the lonely, the Savior who identifies with our pain is the light of life. As followers of Christ we are called to translate, through God’s grace, the cognitive dissonance caused by our questions about the brokenness and suffering of the world into resolute action rooted in God’s love. …
God in Christ “suffers with” the world. This is the actual meaning of the word compassion. I believe nothing expresses the central truth of God’s essence more fully than compassion, the outworking of God’s self-giving love. We see compassion on the cross.
- Paul Chilcote
Changed from Glory into Glory
From pages 103, 104, and 105 of Changed from Glory into Glory: Wesleyan Prayer for Transformation by Paul Wesley Chilcote. Copyright © 2005 by Paul Wesley Chilcote. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Upper Room Books. http://bookstore.upperroom.org/ Learn more about or purchase this book.
Today’s Question
Have you ever thought of Christ’s Passion as an act of compassion? Share your thoughts.
Today’s Scripture Reading
Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
John 12:3, NRSV
This Week: pray for pastors. Submit your prayer to The Upper Room Living Prayer Center or share it in the comment section below.
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Saints, Inc.:
This week we remember Pandita Ramabai (April 5).
Lectionary Readings
(Courtesy of Vanderbilt Divinity Library)
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
For a very long time I didn’t understand Jesus’ death on the cross as an act of compassion. I was too focused on the agony.
Yes, Lord, I lift all who have heard Your calling and have committed themselves to Your service and ministry. Thank You for sending them to us to help us understand, learn, and love You more.
I always felt that the Cross seemed to scream Christ’s compassion through the ages. His comments asking for their forgiveness, providing care for his mother, reassuring the thief beside Him. All the steps of trial, mockery, spit on, death, burial for our redemption. What love and compassion. Without this week and its agony, I cannot be saved to spend eternity with God. So yesterday as a player in the passion I was finally honestly able to say, Crucify him. To cry knowing it was my sins that made this suffering necessary. I don’t understand it but I am thankful and praise God for his plan to save us and willingness to pay the price.
Wow. Really heavy theology here.
Yes.
How can it be otherwise?
Is it not if I see only the passion of Jesus I know not the salvation of the Christ?
Is it not, then, that the crucifixion has no meaning?
I thank God that I personally know Jesus yet know the crucified Christ.
PTL!
A PRAYER FOR PASTORS
Lord God Almighty,
I lift up our pastors to You. Fill their hearts with Your holy love for others. Fill their souls with Your holy fire. Fill their minds with Your holy presence. Fill their mouths with the holy words You would have them speak. Fill their essence with Your holy discernment to know when the Evil One seeks the harder to destroy their ministries. Fill their physical beings with Your holy power to know and care for their physical needs for rest and recreation.
God, show our pastors that they need to allow us to care for them even as they care for us.
God, give our pastors time to personally worship You.
I thank You for this privelege of praying for our pastors.
In Jesus’ name.
Amen