The Grammar of Easter

Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows...  Isaiah 53:4

The choir sang these words in Sunday morning’s anthem, echoing those that had stopped me in my tracks earlier in the week.  God was doing it again, repeating Himself to make sure I’d heard him:

Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.

The verbs.  It was the verbs in this familiar passage that cried out and caught my attention.  The verbs made me sit up and take notice as though I was hearing these living and active words for the very first time.  As a writer whose verbs don’t always line up and play nicely with the rest of the words in my sentences, I’m aware that verb choices and their tenses matter.

I came home and pulled an old homeschool teacher’s manual from a shelf wanting to make sure I knew which tense was on display here and why it mattered.

Has borne and carried.

My manual told me that I was looking at the present perfect tense of these verbs, and that the tense is used in this way:

Use the present perfect tense to indicate an action (or condition) that was begun in the past and is completed at the present time or is continuing into the present.  The present perfect indicates that the past action has some connection with the present moment.  (Grammar and Composition III, James Chapman, p. 80)

The past action has some connection with the present moment.  Relying on an old chant I’d taught my kids to identify parts of speech, I asked the question,

What has He borne and carried?

The answer:  Our griefs and our sorrows.  My griefs and my sorrows.

When I think about Easter, about Christ’s atoning sacrifice and death on the cross, I think about Him paying the penalty for my sin and enduring the grief of being forsaken, in that moment, by His Father.  Isaiah’s words reminded me that Christ not only bore the weight of my sin, carrying it to the cross, but He also bore my griefs and my sorrows, all my heartache and tears.  He carried the weight of all the pain and sadness I experience that is present in a world broken by sin.

A past action that has some connection with the present moment.

So if my grammatical analysis is correct, and if Jesus really has borne my griefs and my sorrows, maybe I don’t need to keep carrying them around.  Maybe, just maybe, He’s inviting me to lay my burdens down.

Linking with Michelle @ Graceful:

And with Ann and the Gratitude Community, laying down burdens to fill empty hands with the many, many gifts:

826.  A God who repeats Himself to make sure I hear.

827.  Lunch with rock-star diva friend--solving the problems of the world, once again.

828.  Every day that she feels a little bit stronger.

829.  Husband taking young man turkey hunting.

830.  The way he becomes like a little kid at Christmas the night before a hunting trip.

831.  Son and friends spending a beautiful sunny day outdoors.

832.  Birthday celebration times two.

833.  An evening of food, friendship, laughter, and joy.

834.  A read-aloud.

835.  Opening day of baseball season and memories of Dad.

836.  Sharing the excitement of the hometown team playing for a national championship.