Trimming the blue spruce trees in front of my home is a tradition full of trials and a lesson in humility. I purposely schedule this job on a Good Friday to remember how the Christ stretched his arms for my sins. The pruning requires lots of stretching up three fourteen-foot tress with hundreds of tiny cuts. My hands and arms are numb after three hours labor. The humility is when I discovered that I could easily have done the same job in the past twenty-five years with the hedge trimmers. The trimmings go into the compost pile and the spruce trees looked like gumdrops waiting for borders to take their residence inside the branches. What you don’t know is that these tress are the best nurseries for the local mourning doves to build their nests inside the branches to hatch their “little ones” in the spring.Before the coming of Christ humility was little thought of, however with Jesus, he has a way of making us look at our trails and sufferings in a different way. Jesus ideal of greatness was the “little ones.”
Each of you walks a trail to tears from time to time. Sometimes we walk together, driven by our pain, but achieving no resolution. Then something mysterious happens. Jesus appears beside us. But we don't recognize him! He looks so ordinary. Somehow he gets inside our heads, and hears what we have to say, the load of grief we spew forth. His response is not rejection. Nor is it sympathy, a patting of the hand. Jesus takes the situation, and hoists it up to a new level.
There's more going on than meets the eye, he tells us. Jesus wants to reveal our affliction for what it is: not the final word, not meaningless pain, but rather the prelude to some bright glory, our own resurrection. Jesus walks with us in our sorrows. He tells us that the God who worked in his life, led him from a cross to a throne, gave his suffering a redemptive purpose -- this same God is at work in our lives as well, making sense from what seems senseless.
But do we see him? And if so, do we welcome him? Hear his message? Recognize him for who he is?
God prays for us as we reflect: “He remembers them, he forgets not the cry of the humble.” (Psalm 9:12).
Lord, I pray for all my Sonshine Friends who cry for “help” in a difficult situation. We thank you that you listen and that you do reward the humble. When we walk the trail of tears and believe all hope is dead, may you recognize a stranger walking beside you, who lifts from you your burden of hopelessness with his hands marked with wounds from the cross. And once you recognize him, let others know of your joy: that the Lord has risen and you are alive with his life.
