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Isaiah 53:3 NLT
He was despised and rejected – a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care.
Do you ever play the game of “What if?” The “if” can be anything of your own choosing but my favourite is, “What if you won the lottery?” I have discovered some amazing things such as my wife’s love of cars, since this would most certainly absorb some of her imagined winnings. For me, it is travelling in comfort, on first-class flights and exceptionally comfortable hotels with access to the most mouth-watering of restaurants. A great game to play around the meal table, maybe Christmas day!
There is a great danger that when we consider our life and we look at Christ, we minimise Jesus’ experience of his humanity. He was born as a vulnerable human baby, little different from you and me. While we know he was the Son of God, it’s easy to assume that this was the equivalent to being born with a golden spoon in his mouth. Well, it really wasn’t. He had to flee his homeland when he was just days old, and returned to a part of Israel that was seen as unsophisticated and the last place anyone might choose to live. Whatever is the last place on earth you would choose to move to, then that’s how Galilee was seen.
I can easily acknowledge the reality of the crucifixion while minimising the pain of Jesus’ earthly experience. I kind of assume he was cool, a part of the in-crowd, carried himself well and people were somewhat in awe of him. None of which is true. He was despised, looked down on, seen as weird by his contemporaries.
Yet, he was just like me and you. This helps me enormously. As I realise that I am more introverted than I’ve wanted to admit, that I find social settings a challenge, although I’ve learned to deal with them, how much I don’t want to be at parties and am confused by my desire to be liked while preferring my own company away from the crowds, I can sense that God knows me well.
QUESTION: Do you pursue a Jesus fashioned by your own imagination?
PRAYER: Lord God, may the saviour I follow be the one I read about in your word, and not one of my own making.
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