"Acquainted with Grief"

"He is... a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief"

(Isaiah 53:3).

    We are not "acquainted with grief" in the same way our Lord was acquainted with it.  We endure it and live through it, but we do not become intimate with it.

    At the beginning of our lives we do not bring ourselves to the point of dealing with the reality of sin.  We look at life through the eyes of reason and say that if a person will control his instincts, and educate himself, he can produce a life that will slowly evolve into the life of God.

    But, as we continue through life, we find the presence of something which we have not yet taken into account, namely - SIN - and it upsets all our thinking and our plans.  Sin has made the foundation of our thinking unpredictable, uncontrollable, and irrational.

    We have to recognize that sin is a fact of life, not just a shortcoming.  Sin is blatant mutiny against God, and either sin or God must die in my life.  The New Testament brings us right down to this one issue --- if sin rules in me, God's life in me will be killed; if God rules in me, sin in me will be killed.  There is nothing more fundamental than that. 

    The culmination of sin was the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and what was true in the history of God on earth will also be true in your history and in mine - - - that is, sin will kill the life of God in us.

    We must mentally bring ourselves to terms with this fact of sin in our very lives.  It is the only explanation why Jesus Christ came to earth, and it is the explanation of the grief and sorrow of life.

    No matter how I may look at death of a loved one in this life... I have to look at first at SIN... for it is SIN that kills!  No matter how well or not so well we have lived our lives, it is, again, SIN that kills!  For it is by our very thoughts, our words and our actions - or the lack of them that we do sin each and every day (consciously and unconsciously) ... Think about it!

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