Lenten Devotion 3/10/19

https://www.lhm.org/dailydevotions/default.asp?date=20190310

Colossians 1:15 - He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

Have you ever tried to draw or paint a picture of another person? If you have, you know how carefully you look at him or her; you notice the texture of his skin, all the subtle colors in her hair; you gaze, you fill up your eyes with the way the person walks and moves and sits. It's rather like love. You notice and pay attention to everything.

Isaiah the prophet did this for Jesus. The Holy Spirit helped him to know, hundreds of years in advance, exactly what Jesus would be like when He came. And Isaiah painted His portrait, lovingly and exactly, in chapter 53 of the book of Isaiah.

How did he show us Jesus? He saw that Jesus would be humble, with nothing in His appearance to attract us. He would be a man well-acquainted with sorrow and grief, someone marked by loss. More than that, He would be familiar with rejection—and that by the very people He came to save. Jesus would be misunderstood and mistreated and finally killed. And He would rise again.

Isaiah had his eyes fixed on Jesus. Jesus was the heart of what he wanted to know, of what he intended to pass on to everyone who would listen. And this is true for us too, isn't it? Jesus is the One we love, the One we watch with all our hearts. And that's because He has loved us first.

Surely, He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows" (Isaiah 53:4). It's easy to feel forgotten by God when bad things happen. But Isaiah shows us that never, never for a single moment, has the Lord turned His attention away from us. He not only knows our griefs, He has carried them. Our suffering has become His own—because He loves us.

THE PRAYER: Lord, Your love and mercy shine from You. Draw us closer to You every day. Amen.

Devotion for March 15 https://www.lhm.org/dailydevotions/default.asp?date=20190315

John 11:21 - Martha said to Jesus, "Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died."

I wonder what Lazarus thought of it. He was very ill—his sisters were worried, and they sent word to Jesus so He could come quickly and heal him. Then they waited. And waited.

I can just see Martha leaning out the door of her house, looking down the road. Why didn't Jesus come?

John tells us, "Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So, when He heard that Lazarus was ill, He stayed two days longer in the place where He was" (John 11:5-6). A strange way to show love! You love someone, so you avoid helping them right away? What kind of God is that?

And yet it's true, isn't it? We have a God like that. We see people who have been in the Christian faith for years and years—people whose characters have been shaped by Jesus, who are clearly walking closely with Him—and they are the ones whose prayers seem to go unanswered. They suffer. They grieve. They go through loss. What is the reason for this?

We don't have the answers we want. But in the case of Lazarus, at least, we have a clue: Jesus' words, "This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it" (John 11:4).

Jesus must have really trusted Lazarus and his family. What a test of faith they went through! Perhaps this is why John makes a point of saying that Jesus loved them. You don't place that kind of burden on anybody but those you know and love with all your heart. Those you are close to—they are the ones you ask the most of. You trust them. You have the hope that they will trust you.

We know the end of this story—that Jesus raised Lazarus, and many came to faith because of him. We don't often see the result of the suffering in our own lives. But like Lazarus, we trust that Jesus cares, and is going to use it for good. Somehow. Some time. Some way.

Because He loves us.

THE PRAYER: Lord, we often don't understand what You are doing or why. Help us to trust in You and to endure the times when we don't understand. Amen.