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Seven Final Sayings of Jesus: #7 'My Refuge'
[Makeover]
04/12/2010
By Admin, Admin
Jesus shouted, “Father, I put myself in your hands!” Then he died.
Why would he choose to speak so close to the end? Why would he muster the last energy he had to cry out? Desperate and dying… but still, with his final breath. --Shouting to the invisible… Jesus entrusts his spirit, his life, and all that has given it meaning, to God in faith, even at the point of his own abandonment when the good seems so very far away.
He proclaims his faith in God and the darkness cannot overcome it. There is something more in this last word from the cross.
Do you know that what every little Hebrew child was taught to say before they closed their eyes at night, their evening prayer was--“Into your hands I commend my spirit--I put myself in your hands”
Some thirty years before in a home in Nazareth, Mary kissed her son good night and listened while he said this bedtime prayer, “I put myself in your hands.” And now that same son at the end of his ministry, on a cross, leaves his life with that same prayer.
In his final moment Jesus did not speak some lofty theological truth but a childhood prayer that still came from his heart and gave him comfort. In the darkness and confusion of our lives, the hand of God is extended for us to grasp.
You may not know where you are going.
You may not know how you will get there.
But this you can always know: His hands are stretched out to you and he will never let you go, not even when you must enter that darkest valley and cross that coldest stream.
What a victorious philosophy of life!
Do I face problems that I cannot even begin to solve? I put myself in your hands.
Do I experience sorrow I am sure I cannot bear? I put myself in your hands.
Jesus spoke this word of faith that he learned as a child at his mother’s knee and tested it in the harsh experience of crucifixion, shattering the barriers of darkness, sin, and death, and letting in the unquenchable light of life and love.
This last word is guaranteed by Jesus’ life’s blood.
The hands that stretch out to us in our darkness still bear the marks of the nails!
Pastor Jeannette Conver
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