Joy

My friend Cora grew up with a terribly abusive father, a man she feared -- and yet she yearned for his love. Bereft of that love, she looked for comfort to a lover, who persuaded her to have an abortion. Twenty years later, she still struggles with grief, hatred and guilt.

Although Cora pictured God as a male -- and therefore she felt she could not trust Him -- she asked Him to heal the pain of her childhood and adolescence so that she could live and love in a healthy way. Time and time again, as God restored memories of times in which she could trust no one, He inserted into those memories the picture of a lamb.

As a child, Cora had worn braces to straighten her crooked legs. Now she lived close to a sheep farm, and she knew that lambs, long-legged and awkward, struggle to walk. My friend and the lamb... they were a matched pair. The lamb was there in those memories with her, and she no longer felt alone. The lamb snuggled with her, but also invited her to venture out. Could she trust the lamb?

I listened and watched through Cora's eyes, agonizing as she weighed her decision to work through her grief, to give up her guilt, to leave her hatred behind her, to receive healing, to venture out to the meadow.

Cora had grown up in the church. She knew that an unblemished lamb -- whole and perfect -- was a sacrifice for sin required by Jehovah from imperfect, unholy humans. In the Old Testament, Jehovah-jireh had provided a ram to take the place of Isaac as a sacrifice on Mount Moriah. But humans still didn't seem to understand Jehovah's love. They didn't know that His name meant: "I am becoming whatever you need." So, in the New Testament, Jehovah-jireh provided the ultimate sacrifice. The Lamb of God -- whole, perfect and pure -- was given to pay the penalty for sin. But although the humans killed the Lamb, many of them did not recognize the wholeness and freedom from sin that was offered through His sacrifice.

In Cora's awful aloneness, God gave her the picture of a lamb. Did she ever fully understand the Lamb who was given for her, to bring her to wholeness, to give her freedom from hatred and guilt? Or did she settle for the pleasant nuzzling of a pet?

I learned recently that what we call Palm Sunday was originally "Lamb Selection Day," the day when Jewish families chose the lamb with which they would celebrate the Feast of the Passover, a national holiday. As a child in Sunday School, I associated the day with palm branches. I thought "Hosanna!" was a shout of praise. But there's another meaning: " O save us! Deliver us!"

Palm-waving was the equivalent of angrily waving the national flag, in protest, to demonstrate the Jews' hatred of the Roman rulers. The angry crowd was looking for a deliverer, someone who would drive out the hated Romans and bring freedom. Palm-waving patriots were actually crying: "O save us! Deliver us! We want our freedom!' But on Lamb Selection Day, Jesus did not ride into Jerusalem as a conquering hero on a powerful stallion. The Lamb of God rode into the Holy City on the foal of a donkey. And when the Lamb was sacrificed later that week, only a few onlookers understood the kind of freedom that the crucifixion -- and resurrection -- brought to their lives.

He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised, and we esteemed him not ... he was led like a lamb to the slaughter (Isaiah 53:3,7). God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). The Lamb of God had been selected, in God's redemptive plan, before the creation of the world. We no longer live in Old Testament times; there is no longer a need to offer an animal sacrifice for sin. In the crucifixiion of Jesus, the one-time sacrifice of a whole and holy Lamb "atoned" for you -- paid the penalty for your sins -- and gave you the opportunity to be whole, to be "at one" with a holy God.

Someday, God's Word tells us, every creature in heaven and earth will join in the chorus: "Worthy is the Lamb! Deserving is the Lamb that was sacrificed, to receive all the power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and majesty and blessing!" (Revelation 5:12)

If you have accepted the sacrifice of the Lamb, your name will be written in the Book of Life with those who have been made whole; "at one" with Christ (Revelation 13:8).

The Lamb waits for your decision ... finally, to trust Him.

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Joy Jacobs Author of Single, Whole and Holy: Christian Women and Sexuality Joy Jacobs, co-author of Single, Whole and Holy: Christian Women Sexuality and One I Love; author of When God Seems Far Away; They Were Women, Too and They Were Women Like Me