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When I learned the Truth in 1985, I lived on the 24th floor of an apartment building in Toronto, and had a view of most of the city. I used to stand on the balcony and wonder why God would choose me to call out of all those people. A few years later Bro. Harry Tennant was giving the classes at a Bible School I went to, and he gave a vivid description of the crucifixion. He told how Christ would have had the “crown” of thorns slammed on his head, be whipped with pieces of bone embedded in the lashes, how he was impaled on the cross and the cross being lifted up and slammed into the ground. Yet Christ endured not only the pain, but the taunts as well. Then Bro. Tennant said, “If you were the ONLY person in the history of the world to come to God, Christ would have done that for you.” I was shaken and cried, not for me Lord, not that.
A few years later I moved to Barrie and began learning to play the piano, as we had no organist. As my ability improved, I wanted to learn a hymn I’d never heard before, and came across Hymn 221. I shook as I read,
Was it for me thy flesh was wounded sore,
Thy body lifted high on Cross of shame?
Was it for me the King of Glory bore
So meek the scourge and ruthless men’s defame?
Bro. Tennant’s vivid description came flooding back to me. “Was there no way for any man to live but thou must die, no joy but through thy grief? Is sin so dark that God cannot forgive save through thy sacrifice, and our belief?” That feeling of “not for me Lord, not this” overwhelmed me again.
As I began to learn how to play the music, I realized the music and words complement each other. Shivers still come over me every time I play this hymn, thinking of what Christ went through for me.
Lord, let me learn thy sorrow, mark thy pain,
That no more heedless through the world I roam,
But come to take the pardon thou didst gain,
And find within thy fold, eternal home.
I pray that I may be ever mindful of this, that I might never take the agony out of the sacrifice He made for me.
Pat Kryskow (Barrie, ON)