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Luke 9:24  “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it. ” 

Write this verse down on a 3×5 card and carry it with you. Throughout the day, pull the card out and try to memorize it. Think about these questions as you meditate on the verse. What does this verse teach me? How does this verse apply to my Life? 

“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” — Psalms 22:1

We here behold the Saviour in the depth of his sorrows. No other place so well shows the griefs of Christ as Calvary, and no other moment at Calvary is so full of agony as that in which his cry rends the air-“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” At this moment physical weakness was united with acute mental torture from the shame and ignominy through which he had to pass; and to make his grief culminate with emphasis, he suffered spiritual agony surpassing all expression, resulting from the departure of his Father’s presence. This was the black midnight of his horror; then it was that he descended the abyss of suffering. No man can enter into the full meaning of these words. Some of us think at times that we could cry, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” There are seasons when the brightness of our Father’s smile is eclipsed by clouds and darkness; but let us remember that God never does really forsake us. It is only a seeming forsaking with us, but in Christ’s case it was a real forsaking. We grieve at a little withdrawal of our Father’s love; but the real turning away of God’s face from his Son, who shall calculate how deep the agony which it caused him?

In our case, our cry is often dictated by unbelief: in his case, it was the utterance of a dreadful fact, for God had really turned away from him for a season. O thou poor, distressed soul, who once lived in the sunshine of God’s face, but art now in darkness, remember that he has not really forsaken thee. God in the clouds is as much our God as when he shines forth in all the lustre of his grace; but since even the thought that he has forsaken us gives us agony, what must the woe of the Saviour have been when he exclaimed, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

Luke 9:23  “And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.” 

Write this verse down on a 3×5 card and carry it with you. Throughout the day, pull the card out and try to memorize it. Think about these questions as you meditate on the verse. What does this verse teach me? How does this verse apply to my Life? 

“All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head.” — Psalms 22:7

Mockery was a great ingredient in our Lord’s woe. Judas mocked him in the garden; the chief priests and scribes laughed him to scorn; Herod set him at nought; the servants and the soldiers jeered at him, and brutally insulted him; Pilate and his guards ridiculed his royalty; and on the tree all sorts of horrid jests and hideous taunts were hurled at him. Ridicule is always hard to bear, but when we are in intense pain it is so heartless, so cruel, that it cuts us to the quick. Imagine the Saviour crucified, racked with anguish far beyond all mortal guess, and then picture that motley multitude, all wagging their heads or thrusting out the lip in bitterest contempt of one poor suffering victim! Surely there must have been something more in the crucified One than they could see, or else such a great and mingled crowd would not unanimously have honoured him with such contempt. Was it not evil confessing, in the very moment of its greatest apparent triumph, that after all it could do no more than mock at that victorious goodness which was then reigning on the cross? O Jesus, “despised and rejected of men,” how couldst thou die for men who treated thee so ill? Herein is love amazing, love divine, yea, love beyond degree. We, too, have despised thee in the days of our unregeneracy, and even since our new birth we have set the world on high in our hearts, and yet thou bleedest to heal our wounds, and diest to give us life. O that we could set thee on a glorious high throne in all men’s hearts! We would ring out thy praises over land and sea till men should as universally adore as once they did unanimously reject.

"Thy creatures wrong thee, O thou sovereign Good!
Thou art not loved, because not understood:
This grieves me most, that vain pursuits beguile 
Ungrateful men, regardless of thy smile."

1Peter 2:24  “Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.” 

Write this verse down on a 3×5 card and carry it with you. Throughout the day, pull the card out and try to memorize it. Think about these questions as you meditate on the verse. What does this verse teach me? How does this verse apply to my Life? 

“A bundle of myrrh is my well-beloved unto me.” Song of Solomon 1:13

Myrrh may well be chosen as the type of Jesus on account of its preciousness, it’s perfume, it’s pleasantness, it’s healing, preserving, disinfecting qualities, and its connection with sacrifice. But why is He compared to “a bundle of myrrh”? First, for plenty. He is not a drop of it; He is a casket. He is not a sprig or flower of it, but a whole bundle. There is enough in Christ for all my necessities; let me not be slow to avail myself of Him. Our well-beloved is compared to a” bundle” again, for variety: for there is in Christ not only the one thing needful but in “him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily,” everything needful is in Him. Take Jesus in his different characters, and you will see a marvelous variety prophet, priest, king, husband, friend, Shepherd. Consider Him in His life, death, resurrection, ascension, second advent; view Him in his virtue, gentleness, courage, self-denial, love, faithfulness, truth, righteousness everywhere He is a bundle of preciousness. He is a “bundle of myrrh” for preservation not loose myrrh to be dropped on the floor or trodden on, but myrrh tied up, myrrh to be stored in a casket. We must value him as our best treasure; We must praise His words and His ordinances; and we must keep our thoughts of Him and knowledge of Him as under lock and key, lest the devil should steal anything from us. Moreover, Jesus is a “bundle of myrrh” for specialty. The emblem of suggests the idea of distinguishing, discriminating grace. From before the foundation of the world, He was set apart for his people; and He gives forth His perfume only to those who understand how to enter into communion with Him, to have close dealings with Him. Oh! blessed people whom the Lord has admitted into his secrets, and for whom he set Himself apart. Oh! choice and happy who are thus made to say, “a bundle of myrrh is my well-beloved unto me.”

Romans 5:6-8  “For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” 

Write this verse down on a 3×5 card and carry it with you. Throughout the day, pull the card out and try to memorize it. Think about these questions as you meditate on the verse. What does this verse teach me? How does this verse apply to my Life? 

We now live in the reality of COVID-19, this is a genuine threat, and it has taken the lives of many already. While we must be prudent to take all of the necessary precautions we can. We must remember that the threat of death is not a new thing. Seventy-two years ago, C.S. Lewis wrote an article about living under the risk of the atomic bomb. His words are relevant to our time and are things to think about amid troubled times. 

In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. “How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”

In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.

This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.

— “On Living in an Atomic Age” (1948) in Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays