April 15: The Wounds of Christ
♫ Music:
Day 45 - Friday, April 15
GOOD FRIDAY
Title: THE WOUNDS OF CHRIST
Scripture: Psalm 22:16-21; Psalm 31:1-5
For dogs have surrounded Me;
The congregation of the wicked has enclosed Me.
They pierced My hands and My feet;
I can count all My bones.
They look and stare at Me.
They divide My garments among them,
And for My clothing they cast lots.
But You, O Lord, do not be far from Me;
O My Strength, hasten to help Me!
Deliver Me from the sword,
My precious life from the power of the dog.
Save Me from the lion’s mouth
And from the horns of the wild oxen!
You have answered Me.
In You, O Lord, I put my trust;
Let me never be ashamed;
Deliver me in Your righteousness.
Bow down Your ear to me,
Deliver me speedily;
Be my rock of refuge,
A fortress of defense to save me.
For You are my rock and my fortress;
Therefore, for Your name’s sake,
Lead me and guide me.
Pull me out of the net which they have secretly laid for me,
For You are my strength.
Into Your hand I commit my spirit.
Poetry:
Prayer
by Czeslaw Milosz
Approaching ninety, and still with a hope
That I could tell it, say it, blurt it out.
If not before people, at least before You,
Who nourished me with honey and wormwood.
I am ashamed, for I must believe you protected me,
As if I had for You some particular merit.
I was like those in the gulags who fashioned a cross
from twigs
And prayed to it at night in the barracks.
I made a plea and You deigned to answer it,
So that I could see how unreasonable it was.
But when out of pity for others I begged a miracle,
The sky and the earth were silent, as always.
Morally suspect because of my belief in You,
I admired unbelievers for their simple persistence.
What sort of adorer of Majesty am I,
If I consider religion good only for the weak
like myself?
The least-normal person in Father Chomski's class,
I had already fixed my sights on the swirling vortex
of a destiny.
Now You are closing down my five senses, slowly,
And I am an old man lying in darkness.
Delivered to that thing which has oppressed me
So that I always ran forward, composing poems.
Liberate me from guilt, real and imagined.
Give me certainty that I toiled for Your glory.
In the hour of the agony of death, help me with
Your suffering
Which cannot save the world from pain.
THE WOUNDS OF CHRIST
Jesus knows about wounds.
It is, perhaps, a selfish reminder on which to meditate this Good Friday. But it has been a season of wounds. I have unearthed webs of harm stemming from patterns of sin, both sin I’ve suffered and sin I’ve committed. I have sat with friends I love dearly in the midst of heart-rending, ashen loss. I have grieved the passing of a season to which I was not yet ready to say goodbye. I have been confronted with the reality that to be a pilgrim is to know an insatiable longing for Home that goes perpetually unmet. All the while, I have witnessed sickness rage and countries war and strangers and brothers attack one another’s dignity with barbed words.
It weighs me down. Even as my outer world marches apace with all the trappings of success, my inner world has felt more like stumbling along in the dark, tripping into both joy and pain as I feel my way forward. I have watched my idealized images of the world, of others, and of myself shatter in the hands of my tender, iconoclast God who will bear no idols. I have witnessed, in his fierce jealousy, his desire for me to enjoy better goods I have not yet learned to love. Oscillating between glimpses of the glory of the Kingdom and the deprivation of my current reality has left me bewildered and weary.
At the cross, I encounter a Man of Sorrows acquainted with grief. I watch him weather the agony of sin not his own, enduring torment from a jeering crowd among which I number. I listen to him cry out to a God who is, for the first time, far from him. I behold blood fall from pierced hands and feet, from a crown woven of cruel thorns, from whip lashings criss crossing his brown back.
I learn, here, the cost of my rebellion. I weep for the wounds inflicted to extend the freedom I trade for old yokes of slavery. I groan under the exposure of the sin I tell myself would be better unseen and unspoken, where others cannot pass judgment. And yet, when I cease striving, when I end my pursuit of protective self-sufficiency and linger with the reality that “Your suffering / … cannot save the world from pain,” I find an unexpected gift.
It is not an escape from the Valley of the Shadow of Death nor even a helpful shortcut. It is not some means of deadening the ache. Instead, it is to see in the gaze of a dying man the depths of a profound, familiar sorrow. It is the discovery that my Emmanuel has deigned to enter my pain. It is the promise of a Good Shepherd who has gone before me into the jaws of death and can be trusted to guide me, somehow, back to Life.
It is the loving invitation to join my wounded heart to his and pray:
Into Your hand, I commit my spirit.
Prayer
Jesus,
Help us to see and understand the gravity of our sin that we may begin to grasp and embrace the depth of your love. Comfort us in affliction and strengthen in us the hope that your grace is sufficient. Teach us to follow you even into death. Be near, Emmanuel. We need you.
Amen.
Hannah Williamson
Alumna of Biola University
Torrey Honors College
Content Creation Specialist at Michael Hyatt & Co.
For more information about the artwork, music, and poetry selected for this day, we have provided resources under the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab.
About the Artwork #1:
Crucifixion
Kim Young Gill
Before 1991
India ink on rice paper
About the Artist #1:
Kim Young Gill (1940–2008) was born while his Korean family was seeking refuge in Jilin Province, China. His Christian family fled from Korea under Japanese colonization as they were forced to visit Shinto shrines to worship Japanese spirits. After Korea became an independent nation, his family returned to Korea, and he later entered Hongik University in Seoul to study the visual arts. In his school years, he won the first prize at the Sydney International Art Contest with a painting titled Upper Room. This incident had a great impact on his life as he later decided to devote his talent only to creating Christian paintings. He served as an exchange professor at the University of Connecticut and the College of Art, Osaka University, Japan, and also served as a professor of the College of Art at Pusan National University, Korea. He executed a mural called Jesus Washing the Feet of His Disciples for the Osaka Church, contributed to the construction of the memorial building for the martyrdom of Korean Pastor Son YangWon, and executed sixty-eight paintings for the memorial. He was granted honorary citizenship of the city of New Britain, Connecticut, and of Los Angeles, California. In his forties, along with his wife, Min Haeng Yang, he opened up his home to people with physical and/or psychological disabilities; his house was named "House of Salt.”
https://www.kimyounggil.com/
About the Artwork #2:
Into The Wound
© Jan Richardson
From The Painted Prayerbook
2008
Artist Jan Richardson writes in her blog that Christ “...was flesh and blood. He ate. He still, as Thomas discovered, wore the wounds of crucifixion. That Christ’s flesh remained broken, even in his resurrection, serves as a powerful reminder that his intimate familiarity and solidarity with our human condition did not end with his death.” We usually think of scars as signs of imperfection or defacement but in the case of Jesus, the scars on his glorified and resurrected body underscore the suffering and love that led him to sacrifice himself the cross for us. During this Lenten season, as we prayerfully examine our lives, how will we allow the wounds of the risen Christ to meet and heal our own wounds?
https://paintedprayerbook.com/2008/03/29/easter-2-into-the-wound/
About the Artist #2:
Jan Richardson is an artist, writer, and ordained minister in the United Methodist Church. She serves as director of The Wellspring Studio, LLC, and has traveled widely as a retreat leader and conference speaker. With work described by The Chicago Tribune as “breathtaking,” she has attracted an international audience drawn to the spaces of imagination and solace that she creates in both word and image. Richardson’s books include The Cure for Sorrow, Night Visions, In the Sanctuary of Women, and the recently released Sparrow: A Book of Life and Death and Life. Jan grew up in Evinston, a small community near the university town of Gainesville. The rural landscape, community traditions, and lifelong relationships fostered a rich sense of place, imagination, and ritual that continue to shape her life and infuse her work. She often collaborated with her husband, the singer/songwriter Garrison Doles, until his sudden death in December 2013.
https://www.janrichardson.com/about
Janrichardson.com
About the Music:
“Only His Wounds Finale” from the album A Violent Grace
Lyrics:
The Author of Life,
The King of all Kings,
Was wounded, and beaten, and hung on a hill.
The Truth of the world,
The sacrifice made,
Has risen, was given the power to save.
Only His wounds can heal the broken.
Only His wounds can save us from sin.
Only His wounds give faith to the faithless.
Only His wounds can restore us.
The day of the Lord,
The promise foretold
The judgment upon us is soon to unfold.
But still there is hope.
The way has been made,
Before us is Jesus, with power to save
Only His wounds can heal the broken.
Only His wounds can save us from sin.
Only His wounds give faith to the faithless.
Only His wounds can restore us again.
About the Performer/Composer/Lyricist:
In a career that spans over thirty years, Michael Card (b. 1957) has recorded over thirty-one music albums, authored or co-authored over twenty-four books, hosted a radio program, and written for a wide range of magazines. He has penned such favorite songs as “El Shaddai,” “Love Crucified Arose,” and “Immanuel.” He has sold over four million albums and written over nineteen #1 hits. Card’s original goal in life was to simply and quietly teach the Bible and proclaim Christ. Although music provided him the opportunity to share insight gained through his extensive scholarly research, he felt limited by having to condense the vast depth and richness of Scripture into three-minute songs. This prompted him to begin to write articles and books on topics that captured his imagination through conversations with Bible teachers, friends, and contemporaries in both Christian music and the academic community, and Card has continued to write to this day. Card travels frequently each year, teaching and sharing his music at Biblical Imagination Conferences, and facilitating the annual Life of Christ Tours to Israel.
https://www.michaelcard.com/
About the Poet:
Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) was a Polish poet, prose writer, translator, and diplomat. He ranks among the most respected figures in twentieth-century Polish literature, as well as being one of the most respected contemporary poets in the world. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980. Born in Lithuania, where his parents moved temporarily to escape the political upheaval in Poland, Milosz left Poland as an adult due to the oppressive Communist regime that came to power following World War II. He lived in the United States from 1960 until his death in 2004. Milosz’s poems, novels, essays, and other works were written in his native language, Polish, and then translated by the author and others into English. A witness to the Nazi devastation of Poland and the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe, his poetry deals with the central issues of our time, including the impact of history upon a moral person and the search for ways to survive spiritual assault in the world.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/czeslaw-milosz
About the Devotion Author:
Hannah Williamson
Alumna of Biola University
Torrey Honors College
Content Creation Specialist at Michael Hyatt & Co.
Hannah Williamson (’18) is a content creation specialist at Michael Hyatt & Co., where she writes content to help overworked, overwhelmed leaders make their greatest contribution and lead a full life. She is a lover of books, play, thunderstorms, and good questions that spark even better conversations.