Matthew 26; Mark 14

Do those of you who have lost loved ones to cancer or some other slow progressing and painful disease like to recall those moments when the pain was its worst? Do you enjoy remembering those nights when the pain was so intense that no amount of morphine seemed to help, when the slightest touch or movement caused a whimper? Do you like remembering those sleepless nights when there was just no comfortable position to lie? And do you remember that feeling of helplessness, the realization your loved one had to go it alone and there was nothing you could do to change that?

You knew they didn’t deserve what was happening. And watching them suffer hurt you, too.

That’s kind of how I feel reading about what happened to my dear Jesus on the night He was arrested. It hurts me to read about his beatings, knowing it was much worse than the words convey.

He didn’t deserve all that. Yet He stood there and took it, for love of me. I will never know this side of heaven what really happened that night, what it cost Jesus to go to the cross.

And, sadly, sometimes I don’t give it a thought. That careless word I said, that unkind thought, the lie, or the laziness, all cost Jesus a night of horror and pain, beginning with the sham of a trial, and the relentless beatings he endured, to the agonizing hours hanging on the cross. I can’t feel good about that.

But I am so grateful. I am overwhelmed by His love. It’s hard to remember what He went through. But I’m glad God inspired the account to be included in His Word. I don’t want to forget. I want my life to honor what He did that night on the way to the cross where He died for love of me.