The Wounds That Speak

The other gods were strong, but Thou wast week.
They rode, but Thou didst stumble to a throne.
But to our wounds only God's wounds can speak,
And not a god has wounds but Thou alone.

From "Jesus of the Scars" by Edward Shillito
Quoted in Tim Keller's Walking With God Through Pain and Suffering, page 113

Presence of the God Who Suffers

"When we have suffered profoundly, we are given something much better than answers for 'why.' We are given the presence of a God who suffers and who makes His own wounds a resource for our healing."

Prototype: What Happens When You Discover That You Are More Like Jesus Than You Think, by Jonathan Martin, page 97

The Symbol of Divine Suffering

“I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross. The only God I believe in is the One Nietzsche ridiculed as ‘God on the cross.’ In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?

I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and stood respectfully before the statue of the Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world. But each time after a while I have had to turn away. And in imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in Godforsaken darkness. 

That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our sufferings become more manageable in the light of his. There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly stamp another mark, the cross that symbolizes divine suffering.”

                       — John Stott The Cross of Christ

Hat Tip:  Of First Importance

Reason for the Season

Noboy Knows the Trouble I've Seen...

From David Haywood at nakedpastor:

Bethlehem and Golgotha: Morning & Evening

"The whole life of Christ was a continual Passion; others die Martyrs, but Christ was born a Martyr. … His birth and his death were but one continual act, and his Christmas-day and his Good Friday, are but the evening and morning of one and the same day."

The opening words from John Donne’s Christmas sermon delivered on December 25, 1626:

Hat Tip: Bethlehem and Golgotha « Miscellanies.