We are entering the season of the Great Lenten Fast, which sets our minds and hearts on both the sufferings of Christ that physically led to His Crucifixion and all of the physical abuse to Him in these last days of His public ministry, and yet also on the glorious end of all of His sufferings outwardly in His Body when He was Resurrected just three days after He had died on Golgotha. He also suffered as much or even more in the rejection of the People that He had called by His Name to follow Him from the first days in the Garden of Eden right up until they chose to negate Him utterly by false accusations, a false condemnation, and a vicious and unjust rejoicing at His death by crucifixion by the rulers of those very people that He had called. What an ultimate sorrow that this has been for Him for these millennia of years since then. Even one of His Disciples delivered Him up for money.
We should be struck by such rejection and cruelty on the one hand, and yet also by Christ’s suffering love for us all, as He even prayed to His Father to ask forgiveness for the those that were killing Him. He loves us all with such a love today. When we are obedient and strive to follow the Lamb of God wherever He goes, He rejoices in our blessings that will come to us if we will just persevere. When we are forgetful and instead lose our way and wander off the path of salvation that leads to Heaven and all of those blessings prepared for those who love Him, He is hurt again, suffering in that His Love cannot find a place to land in our own hearts and minds and in our own conscience.
We are all so human and are so used to the lower vision of just seeing with a worldly mind and heart that cannot easily contemplate God and His Heaven above, but the Lord is calling all of us wherever we may be at this moment, or wherever we have been in the past, to reach out to Him humbly and ask Him to lead us by the hand, especially in this Holy Season of Great Lent. He is near and He is here. May we all touch Him with our prayers for His loving and tender help today! Amen.