The Quiet Lamb Who Carried Our Wrong

(from Isaiah 53)

Long, long before he came,
God told his people a secret.
In those far-from-home days,
while he was teaching his tired people to wait,
he told it like a poem,
the kind you whisper
because it is too tender for a loud voice.

Someone is coming, God said.
But he will not look the way you expect.
No crown. No grand parade.
Just a plain man on a dusty road,
the kind of man people pass
and do not even turn to see.

The world had a sickness in it,
deeper than any cough or fever:
the wrong we do, and the wrong done to us,
the things we hide because we are ashamed.

Maybe you know that feeling,
when you have done something wrong,
and your tummy goes tight,
and you wish, oh you wish,
you could undo it.

God knew that feeling lived in every heart.
And God could not bear to leave us in it.

So in the poem he told them this:
The coming one would carry it.
All of it.
Every wrong, like heavy stones,
piled up and laid across his back.
He would carry what was never his to carry.

They would hurt him.
And he would not shout back.
He would not fight.
Like a lamb led away,
he would go without a sound.
He would not open his mouth to argue,
not even once.

Why? Why would he do it?

Because he loved them.
Because every wound they pressed into him
was a wound they would never have to carry.
By his hurt, they would be made well.
By his bruises, the sickness in their hearts
would be healed.

He was wounded for the wrong WE did.
He was crushed so that WE could be whole.
The blame that belonged to us,
he took, and held, and never put back down.

When God told this poem,
the man had not come yet.
The people read it,
and waited,
and wondered who he could be.

But you and I know his name.

It is Jesus.

He is the Lamb who would not shout.
He let them hurt him,
and he carried our heavy stones
all the way to a cross,
so the tight, ashamed feeling inside you
could melt into something new,
and you could be safe, forgiven, and wanted.

Long before he came,
God was already pointing at him.
Every lamb, every promise, every whispered poem,
all of it was an arrow,
and the arrow pointed here.

To Jesus.
Who carried your wrong
because he wanted YOU.