Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
Imagine the joy you would feel if you were saved from death either by drowning, or illness, or an accident; you are grateful forever after. Can you even begin to imagine the infinitely greater joy you would feel if you could realize you have been saved from what the Bible calls "the second death"?
When old Simeon "blessed" Mary the mother of Baby Jesus in the Temple, he told her "a sword will pierce through your own soul" (Luke 2:34, 35). The word he used was the Greek one for Goliath's enormous sword, thus describing the pain that she would know at the crucifixion of her Son.
Probably no other human has felt quite the extent of that pain. She knew that His conception and birth were that of a virgin; she knew the angel had announced it to her; she knew His righteous, loving character as no one else could know; and yet now He is stripped naked, crucified like a common criminal before her eyes. Greater than her concern for her own salvation was the anxiety she felt for the world and the very universe of God--is the plan of salvation a failure? Is the great controversy lost? How she agonized! Has any other human been so stricken with any "sword" that pierces the "soul"?
She must have been in such pain through the long weekend Jesus lay in His tomb. Now imagine her soul-bursting joy when He is risen! That is the same joy God wants us to know. But we must not remain infants spiritually: we must grow up "to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" (Eph. 4:13), so our hearts can be enlarged enough to savor what has happened, to appreciate what He has done for us.
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: February 27, 2005.
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