Morning & Evening Devotional Reading–

April 11– Morning

 by C. H. Spurgeon, revised and edited by W. C. Neff

“I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint.” 

—Psalm 22:14

 

Did earth or heaven ever behold a sadder spectacle of tragedy than the death of Jesus Christ? In both soul and body, our Lord felt himself to be as weak as water poured out on the ground. The placing of the cross in its socket had shaken him with great violence, had strained all the ligaments, pained every nerve, and more or less dislocated all of his bones. Burdened with his own weight, he felt the strain increasing every moment of those six long hours. His level of weakness was unsurpassed, and his own consciousness became nothing but a mass of misery and swooning sickness.

To us sensations such as our Lord endured would have been insupportable, and kind unconsciousness would have come to our rescue; but, in his case, he was wounded and felt the sword. He drained the cup and tasted every last drop.

As we kneel before our Lord who is now enthroned in Heaven, let’s remember the way he endured in order to extend this grace to us; and let’s drink his cup so that we may be strengthened for our hour of heaviness whenever it may come.

In his natural body, every member suffered, and in his spiritual body, the Church, every member suffers as well. But just as he came out of all his suffering uninjured into glory and power, his mystical body will come through the furnace without having so much as the faintest smell of smoke upon it. [M&E]