Good morning…
As I was walking in the woods, I came upon this tree, a tree branching up like the other trees while being strangled by barbed wire. The tree had naturally grown around the manmade injury, and the mark of excruciating pain had been embedded into the tree’s unique identity.
At first, I thought of the crown of thorns embedded in Jesus’ head as he was taunted by manmade power and rage. Then Pilate ordered Jesus to be brutally beaten with a whip of leather straps embedded with metal. And the soldiers also wove thorn-branches into a crown and set it on his head and placed a purple robe over his shoulders. Then, one by one, they came in front of him to mock him by saying, “Hail, to the king of the Jews!” And one after the other, they repeatedly punched him in the face.
Once more Pilate went out and said to the Jewish officials, “I will bring him out once more so that you know that I’ve found nothing wrong with him.” So when Jesus emerged, bleeding, wearing the purple robe and the crown of thorns on his head, Pilate said to them, “Look at him! Here is your man!” (John 19:1-5, TPT).
Upon this humble man of God, pain left its mark. In that death, by God’s grace, he fully experienced death in every person’s place (Hebrews 2:9, MSG).
Then I thought of the brutal scars of slavery marking our manmade history this Juneteenth. “Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865,” says the article, “when Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas and read a federal order abolishing the institution of slavery in the state: “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.”
“The moment was significant,” historians say. “Texas had been the last of the Confederate states in which enslavement continued, despite President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation to end slavery in 1863 and despite the end of the Civil War on April 9, 1865. Texas was the most remote state in the Confederacy, and it took Union forces until June to reach Texas in sufficient numbers to announce and enforce the federal order that ended slavery there.”
Upon many enslaved men, women, and children, pain left its mark. Plant your feet firmly therefore within the freedom that Christ has won for us, and do not let yourselves be caught again in the shackles of slavery (Galatians 5:1, PHILLIPS).
The next moment I looked up and saw a different mark upon this quietly growing tree.
Again and again throughout our bleeding history, humanity has inflicted brutal pain upon humanity. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law (Galatians 5:22-23, NIV). The living Christ points us all to the freedom of God’s higher, healing ways.
As God’s loving servants, you should live in complete freedom, but never use your freedom as a cover-up for evil (1 Peter 2:16, TPT). Walking in the painful, scar-marked ways of Jesus, together might we plant our feet firmly in the freedom Christ has won for all?
…Sue…
