Healing Tree Hope 2.1

He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed (I Peter 2:24).

This is the season wherein the Christian community focuses on the death, burial, and Resurrection of Jesus. This holy event may cause various shades of emotions to rise up in one's being. A death elicits sadness and a period of mourning. Remorse associated with a death can cause one to reflect on its cause. In the case of Jesus' death, individuals can meditate on the necessity for Jesus' atoning death: to free humanity from eternal condemnation. The opportunity to turn away from, repent of, our contribution to the necessity for Jesus' painful death is worth considering in return for His loving submission to this maltreatment.

We can think of our repentance as a suitable memorial to all Jesus' gift of His life means to our lives. Our minds can be renewed, such that the pathway to goodness can be our reality. We CAN overcome evil with good (Romans 12:21). We CAN employ divine emotional intelligence through sacred management of stress and anxiety through Him Who paved the way for humankind to become a new creation (I Peter 5:7).

A new roadmap has been designed for humanity because of the surrender of Jesus to this ignominious--humiliating--death. This travel guide places humankind in position to escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. The guide further opens the path for righteousness to overtake wickedness. God returns humanity to His original plan through Jesus' death: "God made him who had no sin to become sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Grief is redemptive when there is enough love to memorialize the deceased by honoring the celebratory qualities of their life. We CAN honor Jesus' life by living for righteousness. As the hymnist declares: "Jesus paid it all, All to him I owe." Will we follow the redemptive or the remorseful pathway?

Rev. Patricia Robinson Williams, Ph. D., D. Min., LMFT

Co-Founder and Principal Pastoral Psychotherapist--Sacred Scripts, Inc.

Writer, Wisdom Pages Trademark