He Was a Man of Sorrows Acquainted with Grief

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Fragrant gardenias from my yard

          Life is difficult.  In this fallen world, it can be brutal at times.  Times of hardship, grief, and suffering come to all of us, threatening to overwhelm our hearts, bodies, and minds.  Who doesn't have a friend or relative sick or dying of some disease right now?  Who doesn't know someone going through some kind of tragic hardship?  Who has not suffered?

           It's pointless and impossible to innumerate all the painful situations we have experienced or might experience in our lifetimes.  It seems Satan is constantly coming up with unimaginable horrors.  In light of recent horrific events, the sin and suffering in this world can break our hearts. Grief can tear at the whole person so fiercely at times that all seems lost in an abyss of despair. 

          How can we endure such times?  Truly, it is only by God's mercy and grace.  It is the same mercy and grace that sustained Jesus when he lived on this earth--sustained Him in the Garden of Gethsemane as he suffered in His soul, and sustained Him on the cross as He suffered beyond our human comprehension.

          When times of despair come, we can cry out to God.  He will hear our cries.  Wait on Him.  He will strengthen us.  Expect to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.  Can it be a consolation to remember Christ's sufferings.  Can we join our sufferings to His as a sacrifice for the sins of the world?  He was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, but He won the victory over sin and death by His life and resurrection from the dead.

Butterflies love the lantana in my backyard.


"He was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief,"
Isaiah 53:3.