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With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last. (Mark 15:37)
The death of Jesus. We don't like to talk about it much. You can skip
from Palm Sunday to Easter and never have to think about it. You just
know that it happened.
Death sucks. Just ask anyone who has been around it. A friend of mine, a
nurse, wrote, "The time of dying is at best an awkward time -- at worst
painful, exhausting and smelly."
I think that's because death, in essence, is UNNATURAL. Its foreign to
the way things were meant to be. God never planned for us to die. And we
know it. Down deep inside, we sense we are immortal and stuck in a dying
universe. We don't like watching our bodies decline and the people
around us die.
We don't want to look closely at Jesus on the cross, either. Not only do
we have to follow him in death -- we are the reason He's there. The one
person who could have avoided it, chose it.
"That's ridiculous!" we would tell ourselves, if we even allowed
ourselves to think that much about death. Why would anyone choose to
die? Not just physically die, but spiritually as well -- cut off from a
loving God and in hell. Why?
In Him,
Mike
eDevotions written by Mike Sares. © 2005. |
