Driving down my tree-lined street today, I particularly noticed something that, I guess, is always there. First a possum, then a squirrel, a little red chipmunk, they were all road kill. I have seen them many times and felt sorry that they were trying to cross a road and lost a battle with several thousand pounds of vehicle. It was such a sad sight and as I was thinking on it and driving a small squirrel ran from the sidewalk into the road, I slowed down and it turned as if it were going to go back so I picked up speed and then it happened, he turned and ran right under my car. I thought I had missed it until I heard the bump. I cannot get that sound out of my head. I looked in my rear view mirror and saw it dying, I started to cry and felt like a murderer, wondering if it was a mama looking for food, or a young squire looking for a mate, what ever it was, it was dead and gone. I had to face it again on my way home, still lying there, now lifeless and run over by other wheels. Now you may think this is a stretch, but suddenly this thought came to my mind; Often times people hear all their lives about how Jesus died on the cross for their sin, how He was beaten with a scourge until the muscles were exposed and blood splattered, how He was on the cross and forgave the sinner hanging next to Him, and promised to have dinner with him that night in Paradise. Then the biggest thing of all, He asked Father God to forgive those who had beaten and crucified Him, because they didn’t know what they were doing. Having done that, He became the living sacrifice that was needed to atone for us, all the way into now, we are forgiven. As long as He remains the Jesus on the cross, people can look at Him and be sorry, think it was terrible for Him to have to suffer, and then go on with their life as usual. Only when they get to know Him as a personal Savior do they realize, feel the bump under the wheels of life, that they are responsible for the very act of His crucifixion! Isaiah 53:2-6 the servant grew up before God—a scrawny seedling, a scrubby plant in a parched field. There was nothing attractive about him, nothing to cause us to take a second look. He was looked down on and passed over, a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand. One look at him and people turned away. We looked down on him, thought he was scum. But the fact is, it was our pains he carried—our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us. We thought he brought it on himself, that God was punishing him for his own failures. But it was our sins that did that to him, that ripped and tore and crushed him—our sins! He took the punishment, and that made us whole. Through his bruises we get healed. We’re all like sheep who’ve wandered off and gotten lost. We’ve all done our own thing, gone our own way. And God has piled all our sins, everything we’ve done wrong, on him, on him. Upon realizing that He did it because we have all sinned and come short of the Glory of God, it makes you think, every time you do something that is a sin, yes even my bad attitude, it is like hearing that bump, you know, I know, that it was ME he did this for and I have just turned my back, looked in the rear view mirror at His suffering and drove right on to the store, or appointment in my life that takes me away from the scene of the crime. Once the deed is done, there is no taking it back, but it doesn’t have to be taken back, because, unlike seeing the helpless squirrel that will never rise again, Jesus did rise again and has covered our sins with his own blood. He loves us that much. John 3:16 “This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. Think about it, and be blessed!
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