Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Isaiah 53:2-6
He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
    and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
    nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by mankind,
    a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
    he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
Surely he took up our pain
    and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
    stricken by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
    he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
    and by his wounds we are healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
    each of us has turned to our own way;
and the 
Lord has laid on him
    the iniquity of us all.


Reflection
Our scripture today is one of Isaiah’s servant songs. Some have seen these as prophesies about Jesus who was yet to come. So many times, we want to have a pretty angelic
picture of Jesus but this scripture paints Jesus as someone despised by the world and yet he came to save it.  Are there ways that you see that Christ  is despised by the world? Are there ways that you turn away from him?