Lent Day 29
When Nolan was about 8 months old he started crawling like a madman. One evening Amy was working and I was cooking a pizza and when I went to pull it out of the oven it got stuck. But little did I know that Nolan had snuck up behind me and when I turned, he had put his hand on the oven door to pull himself up and burned his hand.
This was really the first time I witnessed my son suffer. He cried, we took him to the emergency room and he looked like the cutest little boxer with his hand wrapped up. It healed fine and you can’t even tell anymore. But I still feel the guilt of letting that happen.
Fast forward to about 3 weeks ago when we were throwing a nerf football up in the air and he broke his pinky finger trying to catch the football I threw. When people ask him what happened, he says, “My dad broke it with a nerf football.”
Now I don’t claim to be the best Dad in the world, but I’d like to believe I’m a pretty good dad. And one of the reasons is that I try my best to help my sons not to suffer needlessly. I provide food, snacks, drinks, sports equipment, musical equipment, gifts, clothes, and pretty much everything else they need. I don’t know what I would do if someone told me that I would have to watch them suffer because of the decisions of others. I don’t know if I could handle that.
When I read Isaiah 53, and if you haven’t watched Day 13 or read it recently you should, I think about how God sent Jesus knowing he would have to suffer and die. And I think about the specific details outlined 800 years before it would come to happen. And when I think about the complexity of the plan that God laid out for our salvation and redemption, It’s a bit overwhelming.
In verse 10 it says, “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.”
Today as you think and dwell upon Lent, let’s draw our attention to the plan that God laid out. Instead of letting us suffer and die in our sin, he chose to prepare, plan, and execute the excruciating death of his son to satisfy his wrath, to cover our sin, and to tear down the wall of hostility that we had crafted. Today read through Isaiah 53 and dwell upon the type of love that God has to intentionally plan his rescue mission like this.