BRING IT ON

A hundred years ago or so, one Lewis E. Jones wrote a poem that became a song.  One of the lines in his poem says,

“Upon life’s boundless ocean

where mighty billows roll,

I’ve fixed my hope in Jesus,

blest Anchor of my soul.

In the season of Lent where followers of Christ journey with Him to Jerusalem and Golgotha, this poem reminds me that life really is a boundless ocean and that on this ocean mighty billows really do roll.  To be honest, these “billows” have been known to roll over me at times.  They have flat out stopped me in my tracks and knocked me around like a Ping-Pong ball.  Several times they have knocked the wind out of me, submerged me beneath the waters with reckless abandon and left me gasping for a breath of fresh air. 

Many times in my life I have come face to face with the truth of the psalmist who wrote of how the earth might give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, and the waters roar and foam, and the mountains quake with their surging (Psalm 46: 2-3).  Those moments can be terrifying, shaking the very foundations on which we stand.  They are the kind of moments that make me think of what we call “Good Friday.” 

Our journey through Lent has one inevitable destination, a bloody act of man’s inhumanity to man.  Nobody should have ever had to die on a cross.  It is one thing to believe in capital punishment; it is another thing all together to enjoy the act of ending a human life.  Rome seemed to love it.  They made a show of it, put it on display for all to see. Lots of folks died on a cross; Jesus didn’t hold that distinction alone.

Countless people throughout Rome’s Pax Romana, were put to suffering and death. I guess it was a way for them to keep the peace.  At any rate lots of folks died in the midst of their mountains falling into the heart of the sea, their waters roaring and foaming, their mountains quaking with their surging.  Whether it was on a cross or in the everyday, ordinary, realities of life in a broken world, countless people have come to their own Fridays, Fridays they would never describe as “Good.”

Never forget that on the day we call “Good” Jesus screamed, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46).  I suppose when you feel the weight of the world on your back and are experiencing the wages of sin, even though you never sinned, you might just feel all alone and forsaken.  I’m sure there wasn’t a lot of Pax Romana in the air on the hill outside Jerusalem on that given Friday.

You know what intrigues me about that day?  I am intrigued that in the midst of His suffering and dying Jesus knew that at any moment He could have called upon His Father to send 72,000 angels to help Him (Matthew 26:53).  Yet, He didn’t make the call.  He took the hits, the agony, the suffering, the pain, the dying, and turned a very bad day into a very Good day.  In being lifted up from the earth on the cross Jesus drew all people to Himself (John 13:32).  “He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53: 5).

Now, we journey with Him through this Lenten season, and we choose to identify with Him in His sacrificial self-giving.  It is a time to remember and to reflect upon the fact that although God’s grace is free to us, it is not cheap.  It came at great cost.  Grace is ours because God “emptied Himself of all but love and bled for Adam’s helpless race” (Charles Wesley).

Surely we do, indeed, travel “upon life’s boundless ocean where mighty billows roll.”  However, our journey has been connected to another journey.  Better yet, another story has intersected with our story so much so that on this journey we say,

I’ve fixed my hope in Jesus,

blest Anchor of my soul.

And, why shouldn’t we?  After all the Word that speaks of how the earth might change and the mountains slip into the heart of the sea, and how the waters of the sea might roar and foam, and the mountains quake at its swelling pride, prefaced those chilling comments with the word, “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear…” (Psalm 46:1-2).