The Best of the Portals of Prayer
Read: Isaiah 53 / Psalm 82
“… one from whom men hide their faces.”
Isaiah 53:3
Acquaintance with Grief

If there is anything to move us to profound repentance, it is this prophetic picture of the “Man of Sorrows” whom Isaiah paints before us. He depicts Him as despised and rejected by men and truly acquainted with the grief, sin, and trouble of the whole world. Much of the life of Jesus, the Man of Sorrows, was characterized by grief. If anyone was not a stranger to sorrows and woes, it was not our Lord. He saw them on every hand, and He wept over Jerusalem. His personal pain and suffering was even to “drops of blood”. Men turned their faces from Him in scorn. He was “one from whom men hide their faces.” We did not esteem Him for what He was. His lowly state made many ashamed, and many went the other way. Yet, he is still our Savior and Substitute. When He is wounded, he is wounded by and for our sin. When He is beaten, then by His stripes we are healed. His correction is our healing. His grief becomes our joy. Such is the love of God.
Dearest Jesus, may the blows and stripes that fell on You heal up the wounds of sin in me. Amen.

March 04, 1965