"When has something NOT gone wrong on one of your multi-day hiking trips? There was the yellowjacket attack, the tornado, the time you all got hopelessly lost and, of course, the copperhead bite!"
"But that is only four trips, honey."
"You only went on five!"
That was the exchange between my wife and me this morning. I have to admit, she is entirely correct. I seem to have a gift for getting myself into rather unusual circumstances. Yes, I have been bitten by a copperhead, been in a tent while a tornado leveled trees way too nearby, been swarmed by yellowjackets and had to climb out of the Linville Gorge after losing the trail on the way out.
I have also squeezed my bottom lip with a pair of pliers while standing on the top rails of a scissor lift twentysomething feet above the concrete floor, been shocked more times than I can count (thus inducing me each time to do my geeky white boy unhappy dance) and gotten stuck in a wet suit, which my wife had to rescue me from (once she stopped her convulsive laughing, of course).
I have broken my arm while skim-boarding, had a heavy pane of glass fall across my head and been dragged down the road behind a bike with a rope tied around my wrist after falling off the skateboard I was riding. I have been cursed in the vilest of terms by people from multiple countries around the world over a newspaper column in which I was deemed to be intolerant (irony, that).
There is a point to all of this that I am recounting. It has been the odd, painful, unusual moments in life that have turned out to be the most memorable. Honestly, I do not much remember that fifth hiking trip. But the things that used to be agonizing, terrorizing and panic-inducing have through the years become the greatest sources of laughter, joy and comfort.
It was and is the same for God. If there has ever been an event that would seem to cause nothing but agony and bad memories it is the crucifixion of the Son of God. Isaiah 53 gives a prophetical description of Calvary, some 700 years before it happened. It says:
"He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed."
No one has ever endured a more agonizing, torturous, brutal experience than Jesus. And yet it was his agony that made provision for our salvation. Romans 5:8 says, "But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Because of this Isaiah also said that it "pleased the Father to bruise him." Literally, nothing made God any happier than enduring agony and death for us.
I am quite certain that there will be a whole bunch of times in heaven when God is looking across his kingdom at all of the redeemed, and the Son looks over at the Father and says with a smile "Do you remember that time when ..."
Bo Wagner is pastor of the Cornerstone Baptist Church of Mooresboro, N.C., and the author of several books available at wordofhismouth.com. Contact be contacted by email at 2knowhim@cbc-web.org.