One Grape In A Holy Press

I pray that the crushing of my heart - the grief and repulsion that becomes exposed when revisiting the true and extreme anguish suffered by my Savior in the course of my rescue becomes unwavering resolve. His suffering leading up to the cross, every humiliation, every blow, every lash and every insult and finally, every moment that He hung on that cross was knowingly and patiently suffered with intention - to save me.

I am and will be unendingly grateful for the forgiveness that I've received because of what my Lord has done for me. His grace in my salvation will always be heralded and responded to with extreme gratitude in my heart as is right. But every opportunity to meditate even briefly on the subject exposes something more in my soul that is hard for me to contain. It provokes something more, something always present, residing just beneath the surface - raw and very powerful....

 I've been married to the same awesome daughter of God for forty years. We married young and in many ways grew up together. We raised a very large family and have been over more mountains and through more valleys together than I could even begin to tell you here. At times she tries and tests me - she's my counterbalance and the iron to sharpen my own stubborn iron. At other times she's the sweetness and the deep tenderness to soothe my deepest wounds. Over the decades she's grown to be a part of me so deeply intertwined as to be inseparable and yet, she's her own person at the same time. There are none of us perfect and we two have our faults, but I've never doubted that she's a gift from God to me.

I'm telling you this to bring to mind the deep and direct closeness of our union and at the same time how broken my heart would be if anything were to happen to her. What affects her, has the potential to have a deep and immediate impact on me in a myriad of ways. But as is right before God, and as close as my wife and I are, there is a union intended to be even closer and with far deeper and meaningful impact... and THAT is why my heart feels the deep wounds to my Savior and renders up an unspeakable gratitude when I consider the full price that He paid in His suffering for my redemption.

What affects Him... affects me.

I was created to bring pleasure to the God that created me. I'm one grape in a holy press among a multitude of others. My one mission in life, my one reason to exist... is to bring profit - sweetness to the lips of my creator for His effort.  My Lord's effort to raise me up toward that harvest has been extreme - in tenderness, knowing care and at the cost of His own extreme suffering. I pray that the wine of my humble gratitude quenches the thirst of His own heart.

I pray that the cost to Him becomes the firmest resolve in me to be found forever faithful moment by moment to the heart, spirit and direction of the world's greatest lover...

He is mine and I am His.

There's surely joy at the thought of Christ's resurrection, but what about what He endured and undertook leading up to the cross as well? And while he suffered there, was He thinking of you? -You know He was. If we understand what He experienced even just in the flesh, and imagine ourselves in His place, we begin to realize the horrific toll that it took on Him and the price that He paid. When we truly realize it all and accept that as the Son of God He chose to go through it willingly for each of us... what does that inspire? How does one measure that kind of love? 

What does the thought of Holy Week bring out in you?