Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”). - Matthew 27:46 (NIV)
We had just finished a particularly busy Holy Week and Easter weekend when our 15-month-old son was injured. He pulled a tablecloth from a table, and the cloth brought with it a square, rough-cut glass vase that sliced his nose open as it fell. It was a serious cut.
At the hospital, we had to wait six hours for treatment; they had to delay administering anesthesia because he had eaten just before the incident. When his treatment time came, his mother and I accompanied him into the operating room to keep him calm; but he panicked anyway. As the medical team struggled to hold the mask over his face long enough for the anesthesia to take effect, they bumped his nose, starting the bleeding again. Blood was everywhere; it even ran back into his eyes.
With those blood-filled eyes he looked at us as if asking, “Why are you standing and watching them hurt me like this? Why aren’t you doing something to help me?” I told him that this was the only way to “make it better.”Then it dawned on me: God watched Jesus dying on the cross, as Jesus asked, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” But Christ’s death was God’s only way to “make it better,” to heal us and to take away the pain and the penalty of our sin.
The Author Gavin Campbell (Western Cape, South Africa) - from The Upper Room
Thought for the Day - Jesus died to heal us of our sin and the pain it causes.
Prayer
Lord God, thank you for your power and love made visible in Jesus. Thank you for his sacrifice that makes right our relationship with you. Amen.
Prayer focus -Those facing medical emergencies
Colossians 1:15-23
1:15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation;1:16 for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers--all things have been created through him and for him.
1:17 He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
1:18 He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.
1:19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,
1:20 and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.1:21 And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds,
1:22 he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him--
1:23 provided that you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven. I, Paul, became a servant of this gospel.