I think of His hands

I happened upon something cool when doing a homework assignment for Early Modern English. To celebrate the KJV's somethingth anniversary (...400th? I'm sorry; I don't remember. I'm terrible at life), each member of the class read a chapter from Isaiah and had to "find something interesting." Mostly the teacher meant "grammatically interesting," but I found something "interesting in a more profound way." So in chapter 50, verse 6 says, "I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not my face from shame and spitting." I decided to look up the word "give" in the Oxford English Dictionary to see if I could find anything interesting, and I discovered two definitions that really stood out to me:

-to render a service without payment

-to devote, dedicate, or sacrifice

When I re-read verse 6, instead of only seeing it as the Savior handing over his life to those who would ultimately crucify him, it took on the added meaning of how he also atoned for the sins of these people. This added a level of beautiful, hopeful poignancy for me--Christ loves everyone so deeply that he'd even suffer for the people wicked enough to kill him. I know that I'm nowhere near that level of love for people, but it does make me want to follow His example.