How Could You Do This?

Pisteuo! The Devotional

Supplement to Chapter 6

"Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him, from Isaiah 53:10, is the hardest verse in the Bible for me to read. 

"How could You? How can this be true?" I face the words; because I don't understand God at all sometimes. I think I know Him, and then I read something like this and it doesn't fit and I don't want it to fit because it's flat up, palms out jolting. It is. 

But who am I to bleat "How could You?" when He's presenting Himself with no pretense right there in the words written across the thin page and hoping my heart will begin to feel like the parchment it is? 

I'm sheep. Just sheep with a sheepskin heart all parchment. And parchment is sheep skin. It's tough and strong, and prepared so that it may be written on and maybe it's woolly nappy of me to ask, but really, "How is it true that it pleased You to bruise Him?" 

I ask it and risk hearing His answer. I want to hear what He says; I do. But I'm also afraid to ask, because what if there's a part of Him that I really don't like? I want desperately to like Him. Not just love Him because He's God and my Father and all, but to like Him. 

So why couldn't the verse say something like, "The Father took no pleasure in bruising His Son; no pleasure in putting Him to grief"? It'd be a more likable thing to read about Father. It would, but then I'd have a tissue thin heart for easy things to be written on and maybe it's because I am as a sheep that anything less than a parchment heart wouldn't be hardy enough. Or satisfying. 

Paper hearts tear apart easily and tears dissolve them. But a sheep heart? Cry all over parchment, and it'll absorb and expand. So I have one because God knows I bleat out the tears sometimes and I need a heart that won't fall apart for it. Seems to me that God would rather my heart be strengthened by the tears; would rather my heart expand when it's soaked so that what He writes on it is magnified in the expansion and not dissolved. 

Balloons

Perplexed, uncertain, kind of nervous, I ask, "How could it have pleased You to bruise Your Son?" 

The question hangs out there a thick beat. 

I read the words again. I read the next verses. 

He answers. "I made His soul an offering for sin, but not without His agreement. I didn't force my will on Him, rather He and I share the same Spirit and Our Spirit brought Our desire together."

Yeah, I'm glad I'm a sheep with parchment for a heart because I'm hanging onto His words and can't breath right now anticipating what He's going to say next.

"Together We desired to give Our Spirit to the sons of men, the daughters of women, to unite them in shared desire to build their families and Our Kingdom." He says it without batting an eye as if this answer has everything obvious to do with my question.

"Say what?" I turn pages to Hebrews chapter ten because that's been written on this parchment heart, too. "Then He said, 'Behold, I have come to do Your will, O God.'" 

God and Son of God shared His will; and His soul was made an offering for sin. 

I absorb this. My heart expands. His word is scripted on this thin-as-tissue page in front of me and on this parchment heart inside of me. I soak it up. My heart grows larger, and like that His word is magnified till I must ask about a mystery that's growing large too. "Isn't it the husband's will to give his name? The father's desire that his name be given to his children's children? Isn't the father pleased to see his days be prolonged through his seed?"

"He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days;" His answer takes me back to Isaiah 35:10 and we speak to one another like this. Hebrews and Isaiah.

I don't know the mystery of the relationship between the Father and Son as it models the husband and wife relationship as well as the parent to child and child to parent relationship. But it's consistent that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit relationship be the model for all relationships.

I think out loud to God, "It doesn't please a good father to bruise his son; or a good husband to bring grief to his wife. It doesn't. Yet, a father is pleased when a son bears his good name and labors to see the children his father adopted prosper the name."

"And the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand," He responds as verse ten continues. It's all there. We just haven't had this conversation before.

I take it further; "What about the pleasure when a wife bears down and births her husband's seed?"

"He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied." The Lord continues line by line this conversation that's already been scripted on this page spread out flat open on the bedspread where I'm kneeling. 

"What about the desire uniting a husband and wife? Is it like the Holy spirit uniting You and Your Son, and Your Son and His Bride?" It is, somehow. It's mysterious, but I know it is. 

And a shared holy desire transcends the pain required to see the desire prosper. For it to be satisfied.

So I read Isaiah 35:10-11 differently now than I read it before this conversation. "Yet it pleased the Father to bruise His Son. He has put His Son to grief. When the Father makes His Son's soul an offering for sin, He shall see His Father's seed and the Son's days shall be prolonged through the Father's seed. His days shall be prolonged, lengthened beyond His years on earth, through the seed that carries the name of the Father. And this prosperity given, placed in the hand of His Son, is pleasing to the Father. The Son shall see the labor of His soul; and the Father shall see the labor of His soul, the joint labor of their souls united in Spirit, and be satisfied. By the Son's knowledge many shall be justified. Many shall bear His Father's name and character, for the Son shall bear their iniquities."

My heart pours out His word like this because the parchment is swollen and God's word is magnified in the delivery.

Jesus assures, "I will not leave you as orphans. I will send the Holy Spirit to you."

I'm slow, considering how many times I've read these words. All I can say is that reading scripture isn't the same thing as having a conversation with the Author of it.

Well of course now it's obvious. Now that I get it. An orphan is alone, left in this world.

"You will not be orphaned," Jesus told His disciples before He went back home; and He speaks only what the Father has already spoken. He says so.

I'm absorbing this. My heart expands, and it's like seeing what words were written small on a deflated balloon grow, one heart-beat, one lung full, one breath at a time until the balloon is expanded full and the writing is made big enough to read. The words are magnified in the expansion. That's how I see it. Only my heart isn't rubber. And it's not a paper balloon that can't expand or absorb anything without disintegration. No. My heart is like parchment. It has to be. Anything less isn't fit to magnify God's word.

"Your heart, Jesus." An old truth is looking kinda new and taking my breath in sharp. "Your heart did burst. It did burst, on the cross, magnifying the Father's word."

I absorb this, too, and then say it again larger, "Your heart burst in the sacrifice You came to be."

"The Father and I are united." He's telling me that He does nothing on His own, and neither will those children of the Father, siblings of the begotten first-born Son who labored out physically as His Spirit panted to deliver children to the Father and siblings for Himself and His body for us that we might be His body. It's beyond me.

"You are mysterious. Y'all are a mysterious united few." The mystery-the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit mystery-isn't really getting solved in my heart, but that's okay because my heart is getting bigger. And isn't my heart more about magnifying God than about solving the mystery of Him? It is.

Unity

"You will not be orphaned. I will send to you the Holy Spirit. Do as I have done, only this. Do only as the Father has commanded." What He says sounds daunting.

"It does, Lord. It does sound daunting." My sheepskin heart wavers out "Baa."

"Just as the Father and I are united in Spirit and in will, so you, too." He assures the likes of me with the tenderness of a sheep lover.

I absorb and somehow the bigger His word becomes in my heart, the less daunting it is to do His command. I want to do His command. It's in me, and getting larger in me, to do His command.

"I'm not orphaned." The statement rolls around the surface of my heart and soaks slow into the parchment. "I'm not alone."

"My Spirit is on you." He breaths a lung full and my heart expands. "You will carry forth the Father's name and your days will be prolonged through your spiritual children." He says it so true and plain I can't doubt it.

"I'll labor for this, Lord," I have an inkling what I'm getting into when I say this. "I'm willing to be bruised in the labor." 

I can say it because I have a parchment heart that has expanded like a balloon filled with the breath of the Holy Spirit and that magnifies the Word of God written on it. 

And I can say it because I've been bruised laboring to deliver four flesh and blood children of a united will with my husband to deliver his seed. 

And I can say it because it's been said of the One I follow, "He shall see His seed;" and "He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied."

"It pleased You to bruise Your Son." I can say it now. It's less foreign sounding every time I speak it. The words are written on the parchment that is my heart and I wonder, did the bruised Son have the greater part of the Father's pleasure? Maybe, because there's a strange pleasure when pain and grief are made right by a greater pleasure. The bruised Son proved it.

"I magnify You, God. I magnify Your word made big in my heart this morning." 

My heart is forever expanded. 

The hardest verse for me in the Bible, the verse that made me wince and just cringe out, "No! It can't be that!"is now a strange pleasure that's okay to feel.

It's okay. 

It's written.

The Father is pleased. The Son bore my iniquities; and is satisfied. 

written by: Carolyn-Elizabeth Roehrig