Easter is only a few days away. I love Easter because it celebrates the most important event in history. Third Day's music will always remind me of my first Easter after becoming a Christian. For Lent, I always give up something that is bad for me. One year I gave up worrying (and all heck broke loose), last year I gave up eating junk food and this year I gave up eating out. I am reading a Lent devotional by Max Lucado entitled "On Calvary's Hill: 40 Readings for the Easter Season." I want to share with you what I read yesterday because it is so powerful:
[Speaking of Christ on the cross.]
Then, at midday, darkness falls like a curtain. This is a supernatural darkness. Not a casual gathering of clouds or a brief eclipse of the sun. This is a three-hour blanket of blackness...Christ lifts his heavy head and eyelids toward the heavens and spends his final energy crying out toward the ducking stars. "'Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?' that is, 'My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?'" (Matthew 27:46).
We would ask the same. Why him? Why forsake your Son? Forsake the murderers. Desert the evildoers. Turn your back on perverts and peddlers of pain. Abandon them, not him.
What did Christ feel on the cross? The icy displeasure of a sin-hating God. Why? Because he "carried our sins in his body" (1 Peter 2:24).
With hands nailed open, he invited God, "Treat me as you would treat them!" And God did. In an act that broke the heart of the Father, yet honored the holiness of heaven, sin-purging judgment flowed over the sinless Son of the ages.
And heaven gave her finest gift: the Lamb of God who took away the sin of the world.
"My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" Why did Christ scream those words? So you'll never have to.
That gives you goosebumps, doesn't it? What a wonderful picture of GRACE. I hope you have accepted Christ's gift and He is your Savior. If not, there will never be a more perfect time to ask Christ into your heart than Easter.
