Member-only story
Will you meditate with me, about the crown of thorns that Jesus wore?
You can describe the crown of thorns, because you have worn it, too. You know what it is to have a hundred stabbing, painful thoughts surrounding your mind, sticking sharply, and you can’t shake them. Your pains are different than mine, perhaps. Some of my thorns are memories of harsh words spoken to my young and tender children. Some of my thorns are products of apathy, indifference, silence, that left my wife feeling alone and unloved, even though I was right there in the same house, in the same room, in the same bed.
“Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted.”
The momentary pain that I may have caused another is a seemingly permanent pain for me. It encircles my mind. I try my best to ignore it, but some outward pressure or inner mental twitch causes me to remember the barb, to notice it again, to be stung by it. The thorns are never far away, always at the edge of my brow, or at the back of my head, or pressing on my temple.
“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.”