Dare 2 Share - My Dearest Child,
It seems that lately we have drifted apart. Activities, friends, and jobs have crowded our time together out of your schedule. I feel that perhaps you even doubt my love… So I wanted to write just to take you back to the day I demonstrated my undying affection for you.
Remember how they unjustly arrested me, slandered me, and tortured me? Every blow, every sneer, and every lash from the whip was for you my dearest one.
Then the cross was placed on the ground and I was quickly thrown backwards with my shoulders against the wood. The legionnaire felt for the depression at the front of my wrist. He drove a heavy, square wrought iron nail through my wrist deep into the wood. Quickly, he moved to the other side and repeated the action, being careful not to pull my arms too tightly, but to allow some flex and movement so that I wouldn’t die too quickly.
Then the cross was lifted into place. My left foot was pressed backward against my right foot, and with both feet extended, toes down, a nail is driven through the arch of each, leaving my knees flexed.
All this time I was thinking of you, and how the nails being driven through me were also nailing your sins to the cross as well.
As I slowly sagged down with more weight on the nails in my wrists, excruciating fiery pain shot along my fingers and up my arms to explode in my brain. As I pushed myself upward to avoid this stretching torment, I placed the full weight on the nail through my feet. Again I felt the searing agony of the nail tearing through the nerves between the bones of my feet.
Yet all this time I remembered that because I was enduring this pain for you, you would be free from the anguish of hell.
As my arms fatigued, cramps swept through my muscles, knotting them into relentless and throbbing pain. With these cramps came the inability to push myself upward to breathe. I fought to raise myself in order to get even one small breath. Sporadically, I was able to push up just enough to exhale and bring in life-giving oxygen. There were hours of limitless pain, cycles of twisting, joint wrenching cramps, and searing pain as the tissue was torn from my lacerated back when I moved up and down against rough timber- but what is a few hours of suffering knowing that it purchased an eternal place in heaven for you?
It is now almost over. My compressed heart is struggling to pump heavy, thick, sluggish blood into the tissues and my tortured lungs are making frantic efforts to gasp in small gulps of air. I could feel the chill of death creeping through my tissues...soon I could allow my body to die.
The worst agony of all was when my own Father abandoned me- that caused more pain to me than all the torture combined. Yet I would face that a thousand times over to redeem you my friend.
All this that I have described for you, the Bible records with the simple words, "and they crucified Him…”
But I want you to remember that verse as meaning this:
P.S.- I love you!
Jesus
