I’d like to share this picture as a creative response to this passage:

Isaiah 53:2-5

2a He grew up before him like a tender shoot,

and like a root out of dry ground.

A short walk from our house, down toward a nearby squatter community, there’s a bamboo plant that has grown up between two slabs of cement right beside the road. A soft, tender shoot that made it’s way against impossible odds.

2b He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,

nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

Just this one beautiful plant in a jungle of poverty and cement. Nobody noticed it as a thing of beauty.

3a He was despised and rejected by men,

a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.

Not to blame the people who walk by it everyday; they are poor, and their life is hard. It’s amazing that they have enough courage and hope to live as humanly as they do.

3b Like one from whom men hide their faces

he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

One day, when the plant was grown, someone strung a piece of wire from it to hang their clothes. The people who work the tables and cash registers down here in Makati come to work looking like a million bucks; I don’t know how they do it because they hang their clothes out to dry on a rusty wire between a bamboo plant and a piece of rebar in a narrow, dirty alley.

4a Surely he took up our infirmities

and carried our sorrows,

Last year, for Lent, my family gave ourselves the task of photographing something from nature which reminds us of each of the Stations of the Cross. We took pictures throughout the season, but on Good Friday we went out together to look for images, just in our neighborhood, for some of the Stations we hadn’t found yet. Deborah took this picture because it reminds her of the crown of thorns Jesus wore (Station Four).

4b yet we considered him stricken by God,

smitten by him, and afflicted.

The wire is cruelly twisted around this trunk—which will try to grow nonetheless, bulging around it painfully. Things of beauty—sometimes even people—are reduced to mere utility, and then discarded when their usefulness expires.

5a But he was pierced for our transgressions,

he was crushed for our iniquities;

The first picture that my four-year-old son, Aubrey, took on that walk was of a water tank up on a stand. I thought it was kind of random, but I asked him, ‘Why did you take that picture?’
He said, ‘Because it reminds me of Jesus carrying the heavy cross.’ I was really impressed that he was getting the point of the exercise, even at such a young age. We found ourselves looking for Jesus and for the message of salvation everywhere we looked.

5b the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,

and by his wounds we are healed.

This year, when we started talking about Lent, it was Aubrey who said, ‘Let’s go on the walk that reminds us of Jesus carrying his cross.’ So I have confidence to offer it to you as a way of reliving the passion and death of Jesus in this season. In these last days of Lent, look for images around you that help you to reflect on this passage—and bring them here to share with us.