Alone...

I was listening to a radio message this past week on the suffering of Christ. Something struck me with a fuller force than ever before.

Luke 23 verses 26, 49
~As the soldiers led him away, they seized Simon from Cyrene, who was on his way in from the country, and put the cross on him and made him carry it behind Jesus
~But all those who knew him, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things.

There was no friend, or follower, close enough to aid our Lord. Where were the thousands he'd healed, the blind and the sick, the crippled and diseased? The soldier had to grab a perfect stranger, an out of towner from another country, when the Messiah stumbled under the weight of guilt (the cross) that was not his own. Oh how that adds insult to serious injury.

During a dark time in my life about seven years ago, I approached the secretary at my church for help I desperately needed. There seemed to be a question floating in the air around me. I think it was asked 3rd party and related to me later. The question:"Where are her...?"

Think about it. When you're stranded because your car brakes down or, like Nicolas Cage, you're in jail and need a bailout...Who do you want to help you? A stranger who doesn't know you or a friend/family member who does? The answer to that will tell you a lot...a lot about your situation, your companions and your own heart. For, in the first situation, likely a friend is the safer bet...but what about when the cross is your own to bear, beams fashioned and fixed by the rememant of a tree you sowed? What about when the shame's so great, the cost of discovery so significant...you'd rather a stranger's help because strangers don't know you...aren't in your circle. What's it to you if they tell their friends some abstract, unknown, person's problems? Nothing.

Do we have friends/family buckling under the weight of burdens too hefty to bear alone by the actions of those around them or possibly their own? Does it matter to you which? Will that determine the extent of your help, the reach of your hand? Do they have to go to strangers to find kindness?

One of my favorite books of the Old Testament, likely the whole Bible, is Isaiah. But, over and over the phrase, "stretched out his hand" appears for the purpose of destruction and harm...but if you do the same study of the phrase "out his hand" the phrase is prefaced by one very different word, "reached". Again and again, Jesus "reached out his hand" and healed, helped, assisted, SAVES!

I've been acosted several times in the last few weeks, as my own sense of righteousness fought to crowd-out the righteous, right hand of God. I've had to ask the following of my own heart...I offer it now to you, in your corner of the kingdom...Will we be the condeming hand, which God has forbidden us, or the open, outstretched hand, an extention of the grace and mercy the Father has given us?

Remember, we will be in both positions in our lives. May God give us the blessing of repentance and Godly friends during the first and the mind of Christ in the other.

This is possible all because of Jesus, our perfect Lamb, was alone...and yet he has promised that is one thing we, as his children, will never be. Heb. 13:5b “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” Even in the darkest of times, there is a "hope that does not disappoint". (Romans 5:5)