More than the pain of torture,
More than the pain of loss,
Or of his friend’s betrayal
As he hung upon the cross,
Was the pain of separation
From the love above all loves,
That He’d known His whole existence
On His throne in heaven above.
And yet when sweating blood
In apprehension of this course,
He knelt before His Father,
And said, “Not my will, but Yours.”
We’ll never fully grasp the depth
Of his self-sacrifice
To free us from the pit we dug
By paying that great price.
My failures stand before you,
Adding to the weight
Of your burden on the cross
When you took my fate.
As they drove the nails in
You did not rage or curse,
Determined in your task to save
The entire universe.
As your lifeblood flowed away
You looked to other’s needs:
Your mother’s care, forgiveness
For those who did the deed,
And most of all to pay the price
In anguish of your soul,
Separated from His love,
So we could be made whole.
Let me not forget your grace
In all I try to do;
The thing that everyone on Earth
Needs most of all is You.
Promises are easy to believe when things are going well,
When every ear wants to hear the truths you’re offering to tell,
When the crowds are cheering, and coming near from far and wide,
Miracles abound and life comes back to those who died;
But when the mob turns violent and screams in rage at Christ your Lord,
Mighty Rome is on their side and stands with endless gleaming swords,
The one you thought would save you is scourged and beaten half to death,
Those promises can easily seem like an empty shibboleth.
When He hangs there, maimed and spent, His lifeblood flowing from each tear,
The jeering, leering audience fills your heart with more despair.
Last week’s words of hope and life are lost amidst the awful sight,
All thoughts have turned to how to hide and survive the coming night…
Promises are easy to believe when things are going well,
Not when your world’s transforming into a seething, living hell;
Amidst the chaos, turmoil and the terrifying noise,
Remember what he promised in his calm and loving voice.
It was my sin that pinned him there,
My blows he chose to take;
The insults I deserved to bear
He suffered for my sake.
If I had seen him on the cross,
Would I have turned away?
Would I have joined that ugly mob
On that horrific day?
Would I have fled and hid in fear
That I was next in line?
Would I have seen the signs appear
When noonday ceased to shine?
Would I have stood and watched and wept
As his blood was shed,
My heart unable to accept
That my lord was dead?
Would I have understood the gift
That he was giving me,
The price he paid to heal the rift
And set my spirit free?
Do I now live in thankfulness
For all that he has done,
And joy that words cannot express
At all his death has won?
On this special day, I’d like to share a brief vision I had a number of years ago, that ties in with and illustrates the message of Romans chapter 6.
In it Jesus was hanging on the cross. I ran over to him and embraced him as he hung there.
A voice behind me said, “You want to identify with this disgrace? Fine.”
A long metal spike was hammered into my back, piercing through my heart, through Christ’s body and into the cross, pinning me there, and we both died.
I woke up in the tomb next to Him, He helped me to my feet and we walked into the sunshine together.
He turned to me and smiled. “You have died with me, you have been raised with me. Now live like it.”
The most innocent of all of us was ruthlessly betrayed
Publicly humiliated, tortured, torn and flayed
Forced up a hill to be upon it gruesomely displayed,
Yet most distressing was the message that this act conveyed.
It wasn’t because he was weak that this could all occur,
In fact he with this horrifying treatment did concur;
He had a throng of angels at his very back and call,
Yet told them to stand down and let him undergo it all.
Even when abandoned by his closest friends and kin,
Even when guards beat and mocked him with malicious grins,
Even when the shards of bone dug deep well past his skin,
Even when they laid him down and drove the nails in,
Even when exposed for hours in the burning sun,
Even when it looked as if his work had been undone,
Even when the powerful sneered and hurled insults his way,
Even when his loving Father had to look away,
He accepted every injury, permitted every slight,
Submitted to each sinful man’s full rage against the light.
Not once did he protest or use his ample lordly might,
Since this was how he paid the price so things could be put right.
This is one of the first songs I ever wrote, with a very simple haunting guitar accompaniment (stretching my very poor guitar skills to the limit). I was sure I had it written down somewhere but couldn’t find it, so have reconstructed it from what I remember. It is about Good Friday, which is today. If I can get them finished in time, I hope to have a poem about Easter Saturday up tomorrow, and one about Easter Sunday the day after, we’ll see how that goes. Continue reading
The Zwyckyverse 