Regretfully in ministry sometimes I have to deal with women who are in abusive situations.  Sometimes it is physically abuse.  Sometimes it is psychological and emotional abuse.  Sometimes it is verbal abuse.  Whichever it is, it is painful and wrong.  The women I see that are psychologically and emotionally abused sometimes feel lost and completely isolated.  You see, they have no bruises to show and no broken bones.  But they are emotionally and mentally bruised and broken. 

Seeing their lives and entering into their pain, makes me look at this day a little differently.  We in the church are very familiar with the physical suffering of Jesus.  We painfully remember the abuse, the spitting, the plucking out of His beard, the crown of thorns and the flogging that nearly killed Him.  But could it be that the greater suffering and anguish began in the Garden of Gethsemane?  Could that suffering somehow be overlooked because there is no physical bruise?

How heavy is the weight of sin?  How ugly and gruesome is it to carry every sickness and disease?  What would it be like to see every sin committed and feel its devastation?  As Jesus prayed in the Garden the anguish resulted in sweat and blood coming from His forehead because He was seeing and carrying the guilt of every sin.  He felt, saw, and bore the guilt of every sin . . . of every murder, of every child that has been abducted, of every person sold into slave trade, of every girl who has been forced into prostitution, of every drug addicted person.  He saw and bore the ugliness of hatred that would desire to exterminate entire groups of people.  He bore the pain of divorce, abuse, lying, cheating, every sexual deviation, stealing, and every selfish act.  I sometimes find it hard to bear the guilt of my own sin and yet He willingly chose to bear the guilt of all sin past, present and future!  That is mental, emotional, and psychological abuse that we will never understand nor will we have too.  The weight of sin is so hard to carry, that's why He carried it.  He does not want us to . . . He only wants us to feel the guilt for a moment and then bring it to the cross, confess it, and then immediately have it wiped out, forgiven, forgotten, removed, destroyed, and annihilated. 

Today is no ordinary day.  It is the greatest day in all of history of human suffering because all the suffering of the entire human race and all the sickness of the world was felt and carried by one man, Jesus.

Be in awe today of a God that would love you that much!  And be free!