In my journal recently, I wrote…
Thoughts flit through my mind, assaulting my consciousness:
“How long did he suffer? Was his death instantaneous? Was he conscious at all to his pain?”
He was crushed.
Oh God! My boy was crushed.
My whole body recoils in horror.
They recommended that we not view his body.
“You don’t want to remember him that way,” they said.
My boy. My sweet boy who had become an amazing man. A man in love with Jesus, devoted to his new bride, a lover of others.
My heart cries out, “Why did he have to be crushed?!”
Then, swiftly and surely, this thought broke into my painful reverie…
“I was crushed too.”
Oh sweet Jesus!
How awful! And yet, how strangely comforting. My loving Heavenly Father knew what it was like to have a son be crushed.
The difference was that he willingly let his one and only son, the son whom he loved, BE CRUSHED.
Why would He do this?! How could He?
For me and you.
It was the only way to save us.
Sinners. The righteous, for the unrighteous. To pay for our sin, a perfect one had to shed his blood.
To be crushed.
Oh, Jesus! How can I thank you?!
The grave could not hold you! Death had no lasting power over you. And now, because of you, there is hope beyond the grave. My son’s body is returning to the dust. But not the part that was the truest part of him. As soon as his eyelids closed in death, his soul was ushered away by God himself, his body falling down in ripples beside him, like one who sheds his coat on a sweltering hot day.
Isaiah 53 says…
“Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth. Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors.”
Isaiah 53:1-12 ESV
Through our pain, God brings us close to his own suffering, beating heart. And when that suffering leads to death, he will carry us swiftly to the very bosom of Christ. He was crushed on that cross so that, though our bodies may be killed, our souls are free to fly to Jesus, as believers in His name. And one day, our bodies will be restored. Fully, completely, perfectly.
Joni Eareckson Tada once said in a devotional she had written called Beside Bethesda, “Somehow, in the midst of your suffering, the Son of God beckons you into the inner sanctum of His own suffering – a place of mystery and privilege you will never forget. I have suffered, yes. But I wouldn’t trade places with anybody in the world to be this close to Jesus.”
In the trauma and pain of loss, His presence with me has never been sweeter. The hunger to know more of Him has never been greater. In His providence, the thing that has brought me the greatest pain has also been the source of my greatest joy.
Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief. Make me strong to carry whatever cross you call to me bear. Make me willing to be crushed for the sake of Jesus. To carry my own cross of suffering alongside my Savior. I know that whatever you call me to, I will not walk alone. For you are closer than my very breath. I will never ever walk this broken way alone.
