Will you return at Nightfall?

With His stripes we are healed.

 Isaiah 53:5

 

"Pilate delivered our Lord to the lictors to be scourged.

The Roman scourge was a most dreadful instrument of torture.
It was made of the sinews of oxen, and sharp bones were inter-twisted every here and there among the sinews; so that every time the lash came down these pieces of bone inflicted fearful laceration, and tore off the flesh from the bone.

The Savior was, no doubt, bound to the column, and thus beaten.
He had been beaten before;
but this of the Roman lictors was probably the most severe of His flagellations.

--My soul,--

stand here and weep over His poor stricken body.

 

He is at once fair as the lily for innocence,

and red as the rose with the crimson of His own blood.

As we feel the sure and blessed healing which His stripes have wrought in us, does not our heart melt at once with love and grief?

We would fain go to our chambers and weep; but since our business calls us away, we will first

 pray our Beloved to print the image of His bleeding self upon the tablets

of our hearts all the day,

and at nightfall we will return

to commune with Him,

and sorrow that our sin should

 have cost Him so dear."

Charles Spurgeon