Holy Saturday - Devotions in Exile The Seventh Word of Christ from the Cross
Holy Saturday - Devotions in Exile
Commit Our Lives To God – 7th Word
Luke
23:46 And when Jesus cried out with a
loud voice, He said, "Father, into Your hands I commend My
spirit." And having said this, He
breathed His last.
Jesus
resigns Himself into the hands of His Father before breathing His last breath.
How often do we struggle against doing just that? This is not simply talking
about commending ourselves to God as we face death. Do we trust God in the
cares and concerns of our daily lives?
What is it that causes us to refuse to
leave our lives and our future in the hands of our Heavenly Father? He has
promised to take care of us and supply for all our needs, but we fight that. We
are afraid of the future.
Do you fully and completely trust God?
When your livelihood is in turmoil, when the future is uncertain, when we are all
face with global pandemic? Does anxiousness wreak havoc with our faith? What is
the first item on you budget? Will God care for us completely, or does worry
consume hope and confidence?
There are times that our faith falters
when we look to the future, and especially as we consider the termination of
this life as we know it. When it comes to commending ourselves completely into
our heavenly Father’s hand, we must bow our heads in repentance.
Hearing this last Word of Christ from
the cross, we do so knowing something those gathered beneath the cross that
Friday did not know – we know the proclamation of Easter morning – He is risen!
He is not here! Why do you seek the living among the dead?
This last Word of Jesus from the cross
is accentuated and by the open throated roar of the empty tomb. In the empty
tomb we see that Christ’s last Word from the cross should be our daily
confidence, it should make us laugh at the foolishness of our faithlessness. Tomorrow’s
empty tomb boldly declares that Christ was right to commend Himself into the
hands of His Father, for Christ was not abandoned to the cold, damp, earth, but
was raised from the dead.
You have the same assurance! You are
baptized into Christ, therefore into His death. His death brings us also into a
resurrection like His. Commending ourselves into the hand of our Father, we confidently
believe that our bodies will at the last day be raised from the dead.
Recalling the 2nd Word from
the cross, we know that like the repentant thief, our spirit will join Christ
after our death in paradise. So we will be with the Lord, until that last day
comes and we are gloriously reunited with our bodies.
Until that day we are still afraid! We
see the death, the terror, and the state of our earthly existence, knowing that
we are unable to escape death – and so we are unable to release ourselves from
the fear of death. We are, on our own,
unable to commend our spirit and our future into the hands of our Heavenly
Father.
When we gather together in worship, we
are given the promises of God. The Spirit of God is at is at work in that Word
and promise – through His precious gifts to us of Communion and Baptism, to
strengthen our faith.
As our faith is strengthened, we are
able to look forward to our future with hopeful longing and expectation. Our
future no longer holds the terror of some grim reaper waiting to end our lives.
Instead, it holds the beautiful vision of a glorious reunion with our Savior.
Through Christ's death on the cross the
debt of sin has been paid, His resurrection is the seal of God’s assurance that
the price has been accepted in our behalf and our sins are forgiven. As He rose
from the dead, we know that we also will be raised. It is in confidence that we
can commend our spirits to our Father in Heaven, and join Paul in exclaiming,
"For me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain!"
PRAYER: Father, Help me to commend my life – each and
every day of it – into Your loving hands, and at the last, to look expectantly
to my future in eternity with You. Amen.
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