Gateways to Joy

Please listen, reflect and examine your heart while listening {scroll down to pause the music}. Bless you and may your days be filled with remembering Him and enjoying your love ones.  Don't forget to count the blessings!

I n reading the accounts of Jesus' death in Chuck Swindoll's, "The Darkness and the dawn."   I'm horrified at the barbaric way the Romans chose death for their convicted criminals. "How could a soul drive nails in the wrist of another, especially an innocent man, and not be mortified?"  Here God's Son stood in their very midst and they (the many people) missed Him.  Even most of the highly religious leaders missed Him.  How could such a travesty be? In pondering on this I am led to read my bible and open the pages to read these words, "The woman said to the serpent, 'From the fruit of the tress of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.' The serpent said to the woman, 'You surely will not die!  For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing ...

'D espised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief ... we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.  But He was wounded for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed.  All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.  He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet He opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth . ... He was cut off of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people. ...  There was no deceit in his mouth.  Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief." ~ Isaiah 53, 3-10 Each Wednesday I participate with Ann Voskamp and a few other bloggers in community over at a holy experience  ...