"I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint" (Psalm 22: 14).
Did earth or heaven ever behold a sadder spectacle of woe? In soul and body, our Lord felt Himself to be weak as water poured on the ground. The placing of the cross in its socket had shaken Him with great violence, had strained all the ligaments, had pained every nerve, and more or less dislocated all His bones. Burdened with His own weight, the Sufferer felt the strain increasing every moment of those six long hours. His sense of faintness and general weakness was overpowering, while to His own consciousness He became nothing but a mass of misery and swooning sickness. How faint He must have been when He saw the dread vision of the wrath of God and felt it in His own soul! To us, sensations such as our Lord endured would have been insupportable, and kind unconsciousness would have come to our rescue. But in His case, He was wounded and felt the sword. He drained the cup and tasted every drop. As we kneel before our now ascended Savior's throne, let us remember well the way by which He prepared it as a throne of grace for us. Let us, in spirit, drink of His cup that we may be strengthened for our hour of heaviness whenever it may come.