Good Friday: A Prayer

O LORD, my God and Savior –

Mockery was a great ingredient to your woes.
Judas mocked You in the Garden;
the chief priests and scribes laughed you to scorn;
Herod set you at nought;
the servants and the soldiers jeered and harassed you with brutal insults;
Pilate and his guards ridiculed Your royalty, even though it was truth;
and on Your cross—where you bled through your hands, your feet, your brow—all sorts of horrid jests and hideous taunts were hurled at You.

Such ridicule is always hard to bear, but all the more when we are in intense agony.
And all the more when it is so heartless, so cruel, that it cuts us to the quick.

As I picture you hanging on Your cross, my great God and Savior crucified, I cannot bear the thought. Your frail and beaten Self was racked with anguish far beyond all mortal guess. A motley mob wagged their heads and thrusted out the lip in bitterest contempt and insult toward you, a suffering victim. So humble a Savior!

O Jesus, “despised and rejected of men,” “acquainted with grief and sorrow,” how could You die for men who treated You so ill, so poorly, so horridly? How? Herein is love so amazing, love divine, yes, love beyond degree! We, too, have despised You in the days of our own unregenerate state, and even since our new birth we have set the world on high in our hearts, and yet You bled to heal our wounds and died to give us life.

Oh, that we could set You on a glorious high throne in all men’s hearts! We would ring out Your praises over land and sea till men should as universally adore as once they did unanimously reject.

Your creatures wrong You, Oh sovereign LORD! And yet, Your grace comes down to us like a river from that Cross. You died and rose again that we might do the same. So we run to you, from the foot of that cross to the foot of Your throne, hearts bursting forth with thanksgiving and praise, “Oh God, take me! Like You there is no other! My life is purchased and Yours!”

(adapted from Charles H. Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening devotional)