Follow me
Where I go,
What I do,
And who I know.
Make it part of you to be a part of me.

Older readers will immediately hear the voice of John Denver singing these words, which speak the essence of friendship, of the willingness to join oneself into the life and experience of another. In the upper room, Jesus said to his disciples, “Abide in me, and I in you. No longer do I call you servants, but I call you friends” (John 15:4, 15).

Mel Gibson’s film, The Passion of the Christ took the world by storm, big time. I did not see it, preferring not to want a gory Hollywoodized spectacular to get imprinted on my mind. The response wherever shown, however, may have exceeded even Gibson’s expectations—the gripping focus on suffering, brutality, and human madness.

The Lesson Study Guide presents this statement for Wednesday December 26:

Clearly, something much more was happening here than just the death, however unfairly, of an innocent man. According to Scripture, God's wrath against sin, our sin, was poured out upon Jesus. Jesus on the cross suffered not sinful humanity's unjust wrath but a righteous God's righteous indignation against sin, the sins of the whole world. As such, Jesus suffered something deeper, darker, and more painful than any human being could ever know or experience.

She sat there in her freshman Bible class and wept. The Bible teacher had just insisted that whatever occurs is God’s will. Glory comes to God through whatever happens, even evil. She wept because her mother had brain cancer. A world where God willed such things for his glory, for the purpose of exalting his own name, perplexed and eluded her. My daughter, a classmate, came home bewildered. This kind of a God troubled her as well. As she understood God, he does not act this way.