The Thought for the Day is taken from Isaiah 53 v 4.
Surely, he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted.
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated in 1982. In the first 15 years 54,000 items were left at the Wall. It still takes almost an hour every night, and much longer on Memorial Day, to collect the mementoes—a teddy bear, a photo of a soldier’s grandchild, a letter from a daughter who never knew her dad.
Each item is labelled and taken to a warehouse. No one knows quite how to deal with it all. “No one ever expected this to happen,” a park ranger says. “It’s so personal. It caught everyone by surprise.”
Loss comes to us all and we often carry our grief for many years. We struggle with our emotions. Is there a place where we can leave our sorrows and find healing for our wounds of life? We can bring our grief to the Man of sorrows. There is help and healing and closure for the deepest pain of our hearts.
Leave your sorrows with the “Man of Sorrows.”
There has been so much loss over the last couple of years. Not just in the huge number of deaths but loss of freedom, loss of good health, loss of our normal way of living, loss of personal contact and so the list can go on.
But we can be assured that there is no loss in God’s love. He is there for us all the time and He can help us to understand and cope with the wounds of life. Remind us that, although separated from each other, nothing can separate us from the love of Christ, no trouble or hardship, neither death nor life, not what is happening at present, nor what might happen in the future, nothing in all creation. So Lord , hear us as we pray for one another in Your name, Amen.