Isaiah 53 - Please take out the garbage for me!

Who takes out the garbage at your house? If you live alone you get to take out your own garbage. Perhaps others in your household do it or share the job. It's not fun, especially during summer heat or when there's something particularly putrid in the trash. But the longer it stays inside, the worse it smells.

We all have garbage. Maybe it's things we've done wrong, or wrongs others have done against us. It could be tragedies, burdens, failures, or just being beaten up by life. We're left without any energy or motivation to "take out the garbage" and so we're stuck with the smell filling our nostrils. 

One of my seminary professors put it so simply: Someone else has to take out the garbage for us. That's what Jesus did when He endured life on earth, finally being crucified.

Isaiah 53 describes it this way:
3 "He was despised and rejected— a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief... 4 Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down...
6 All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the Lord laid on him the sins of us all.
11...He will bear all their sins. 12 ...He exposed himself to death. ...He bore the sins of many and interceded for rebels." (New Living Translation) 

Lord, I've created plenty of my own garbage. Then there's garbage that others have left to rot under my very nose. I'm too tired, too worn out from trying to clean it up by myself. Please... take the garbage out for me. Thank You! Amen.