Lenten Feast Day

Lenten Feast Day

Sunday, March 12, 2017

Scorn has broken my heart and has left me helpless;
I looked for sympathy but there was none,
for comforters but I found none.
They put gall in my food, and gave me vinegar for my thirst.
Psalm 69:20-21

If we ever doubted that Jesus suffered because his own intimate friends forsook him – didn’t pay careful attention to what he was trying to tell them -- didn't comfort him in his agony as he moved toward the cross – these prophetic words from the Psalms should dispel such doubts!

David knew, through the Holy Spirit, that Jesus was going to suffer loneliness, and friends would flee. He would long for comfort but find none. He would want understanding in the pain of his scorn, but find no comforting voice or hands.

Reading this makes us sad. We console ourselves by thinking, “If I had been there, I wouldn’t have rejected him or failed to understand. I would have comforted him.” But deep in our hearts, we know that that is not the truth. We’ve seen too many who were going through bad times and not stopped in our hurry. We have seen the disfigured and looked the other way because we didn’t know what to do. We have hurried through a hospital and ignored the cries of the sick. We know that Jesus said, “If you have done for the least of these, you have done for me,” but we’ve done nothing.

We have to admit that we have often ignored “the least,” so we cannot allow ourselves to think that we would have done other than what the disciples did had we been there in the first century with Christ.

Prayer: Father, we are ashamed that we have been insensitive. Help us this Easter to understand more fully just how painful it was for Jesus to be alone – and all for us! Amen.

And He Set His Face toward Jerusalem. . . .A Lenten Devotional Guide
prepared for Homosassa United Methodist Church, Spring 2007,
by Patience Nave, Christian Education Coordinator