Tuesday, January 10, 2022

So Philip ran to him, and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah, and said, “Do you understand what you are reading?” And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he asked Philip to come up and sit with him. The place in the Scripture which he read was this: “He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; And as a lamb before its shearer is silent, So He opened not His mouth. In His humiliation His justice was taken away, And who will declare His generation? For His life is taken from the earth.”

Acts 8:30-33

To understand why this man would be drawn to the passage, one must be briefed on what he endured. Eunuchs were men whose genitals were removed at an early age. This would be done so that they could serve in trusted roles, like serving the queen or the king. In the case of a king, he did not have to worry about the eunuch trying to steal the kingdom or having sexual relations with his wife. The life of the eunuch was to serve, not looking forward to any present intimacy or future generations.

The process of removing the genitals could be brutal, sometimes without any anesthesia. I can imagine the eunuch understood this suffering servant passage, as he thought about the day he was castrated. He probably felt like a sheep led to the slaughter. Maybe he was told to conceal his pain and keep his mouth closed. What utter humiliation he must have endured when they gave him his testicles and possibly another organ and told him to keep them in a jar that would be returned to him upon his death.

What about the life of Christ resonates with yours? Hebrews 4:14-16 states that we have a great high priest who is able to empathize with our weakness. This knowledge should propel us to approach his throne with confidence that we will find mercy and grace to help us in our times of need.

PRAYER: Lord, there are things about your life that resonate with my life. I am moved by the fact that you are our great high priest, and you can be touched with the feeling of my infirmities. There is nothing that I experience that you did not experience. There is nothing you did not defeat on the cross. Let me live in that place of intimacy and familiarity with you. In the name of Jesus, I pray. Amen