PUT HIM ON

"I think that the good and the great are only separated by the willingness to sacrifice." - Anonymous

Augustine narrating an experience says, "I was weeping in the most bitter contrition of my heart, when I heard the voice of children from a neighboring house chanting, "take up and read; take up and read." I could not remember ever having heard the like, so checking the torrent of my tears, I arose, interpreting it to be no other than a command from God to open the book and read the first chapter I should find. Eagerly then I returned to the place where I had laid the volume of the apostle. I seized, opened, and in silence read that section on which my eyes first fell: "Not in revelry and drunkenness, not in licentiousness and lewdness, not is strife and envy; but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts."
No further would I read, nor did I need to. For instantly at the end of this sentence, it seemed as if a light of serenity infused into my heart and all the darkness of doubt vanished away."

A chaplain was speaking to a soldier in a cot in a hospital. "You have lost an arm in the great cause," he said. "No," replied the soldier with a smile. "I didn't lose it--I gave it." In that same way, Jesus did not lose His life. He gave it purposefully.

Like Augustine many of us actually need to 'take up and read,' to receive clear instructions, or answers on nagging, confusing issues of our lives. Like the soldier, Jesus didn't lose his life, he gave it. So that, we all through his circumstances, we can find life, salvation, deliverance, healing or restoration. Jesus is the solution to that concern. 'Put Him on.'