What He Suffered

I decided to make and can strawberry jam today only because I admittedly have a few screws loose with a newborn in the house and seem to only be content with myself if I am testing my stress limits.  While Julia was sleeping I rushed to wash and remove the tops of the strawberries, only to be bombarded by offers to "help."  As anyone knows when a baby is sleeping you only have limited time with two hands free, but I could not ignore Colette and Mary's desire to be close to Mommy and feel validation in participating with the jam making.

Mary, being only two and still limited in abilities to follow directions, was assigned the task of taking the strawberries that had been washed out of the strainer into a bowl to be de-topped.  This was really an unnecessary step created only for her participation.  It slowed my entire procedure down considerably.  She took every strawberry, one at a time, into her little hands and stared at it, her hands trembling with the resistance of desire to crush the berry and hesitantly placed it in the bowl.  The battle of good and evil continued with each transfer.  I was becoming anxious as I could hear Julia starting to rouse.  "Mary, just put them in the bowl!" I exclaimed more than once.

I knew I should be valuing my time with the girls, no one bickering or being deviant, but I just wanted to get my task done so I could move on to the piling activities I faced today.  I told myself to relax and delight in the way Mary would sneak glances through her long eyelashes to see if I was watching, her thumb quivering at its power to demolish the soft tissue of the berry in hand.  But it was supposed to be a five minute task that was turning into an eternity, with each minute eating away at the possibility of the jam ever being produced.  I did not want to relieve Mary of her duties because her pride was as vulnerable as the strawberry she held in her hand, but similarly, I quivered with the ability to just crush her spirits and swoop her off the chair.  "This is excruciating!" I thought to myself.

Excruciating.  I actually thought that word was applicable to my situation.  It was "excruciating" to watch and wait, while the existence of my strawberry jam balanced in the hands of Mary.  Maybe it is attributed to the observance of the day that the word came so quickly to mind.  I was filled with shame.  To describe my laughable and really, rather delightful situation with the same term that was created to describe the way my Savior died was shameful.  How quick I am to allow the small anxieties of life to consume me.  I consider them sufferings, worthy of my complaining.

We so freely use terms without considering the weight of the word.  Love, hate, awesome, wicked, starving, excruciating...  We profess our love for shoes.  Proclaim hatred of brussel sprouts.  Describe our physical state of the three hours between lunch and dinner as starvation.  Our lack of patience with our little child becomes an excruciating situation.  Our overuse and misuse of words eats away at our very ability to communicate the extremity of a true situation; one such as my Lord and Savior dying on a cross for the sins of this world.

He suffered.  Ah, yes- suffering- I know all about it.  I suffered from a cold last week.  It was brutal.  Really.

Do we take the time to meditate on how He actually suffered?  Or has our tendency to overuse extreme words to exaggerate trivial situations caused us to minimize what He endured to express His love.  His love.  When we confess our "love" for material things that we abandon when the newest upgrade comes along, how can we understand the concept that drove Him to the cross?

He suffered.  It was excruciating.  I think Mel Gibson's "The Passion" provided us with a vivid look at the physical torment that Christ went through.  I think it is important for us to recognize that.  But far more important is to consider that mental and spiritual torment that He suffered for you.  It is not easily fathomed and so, not often considered.  Jesus had the ability to escape His situation at any moment.  He submitted to it.  That battle alone had to be exhausting.  Then, there was His awareness of the state of the whole world that rested on His shoulders.  He knew His disciples deserted Him and were hiding in fear, wondering if they had been deceived in believing in Jesus.  Judas had betrayed Him.  He knew the inner-workings of the hate that nailed Him on that cross, but knew that even still, some of those responsible would later turn to Him in love and He would receive them.  And, He knew that for many, what He did would not be enough to prove God's love for them.

But the least realized aspect of His suffering was by the hand of His Father, the only One who truly loved Him.  Isaiah 53:10 "Yet it was the Lord's will to crush him and cause him to suffer."  It was the will of the Father that Christ suffer and die for those who did not love Him, so that they might.  God poured out His wrath upon the Son that He loved, so that you might consider that He loves you.  The very Son was separated from His Father at the cost of your sin.  God turned His back on Him, because He would not turn His back on you.  He turned His back on Christ, because God knew He would endure it.  And He did.  And He did it for you.  And He knew you might not believe it, but He did it for those who would.

He suffered at the hand of His Father, because He loved you.  This was not love like you "love" your new pair of shoes or new car or the ice cream you treat yourself tonight.  It was not even love like you feel for your spouse.  The weight of that word drove Him to the cross and carried Him through all the suffering.  There is no other love like it in the world.