April 11, Morning

C. H. Spurgeon · Modern retelling

"I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint." — Psalm 22:14 · KJV

Did earth or heaven ever behold a sadder spectacle of woe? In soul and body, our Lord felt Himself weak as water poured on the ground. The setting of the cross in its socket had shaken Him with great violence, strained all the ligaments, pained every nerve, and more or less dislocated all His bones. Burdened with His own weight, the august Sufferer felt the strain increasing every moment of those six long hours. His sense of faintness and general weakness was overpowering, until, to His own consciousness, He became nothing but a mass of misery and swooning sickness. When Daniel saw the great vision, he described his feelings thus: "There remained no strength in me, for my comeliness was turned in me into corruption, and I retained no strength." How much more faint must our greater Prophet have been, when He saw the dread vision of the wrath of God, and felt it in His own soul! To us, such sensations as our Lord endured would have been unbearable, and kind unconsciousness would have come to our rescue; but in His case He was wounded and felt the sword; He drained the cup and tasted every drop. O King of grief — a title strange, yet true, and due to You, of all kings, alone — O King of wounds, how shall I grieve for You, who in all my grief go before me! As we kneel before our now ascended Savior's throne, let us remember well the way by which He prepared it as a throne of grace for us; let us in spirit drink of His cup, that we may be strengthened for our hour of heaviness whenever it comes. In His natural body every member suffered, and so it must be in the spiritual; but as out of all His griefs and woes His body came forth uninjured to glory and power, even so shall His mystical body come through the furnace with not so much as the smell of fire upon it.