Verse of the Day “I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for thou, LORD, only makest me dwell in safety.” - Psalm 4:8 Heavenly Father, The day is done, and I come to You in the quiet of the evening. The work is set aside, the voices have grown still, and now it is just You and me. Thank You for carrying me through this day, for the strength You gave when mine ran low, for the grace that covered what I could not fix, and for the countless small mercies I may not even have noticed. You were with me in every hour. Where I fell short today, in my words, my thoughts, or my patience, forgive me, Father. Wash this day clean, so I do not carry its burdens into the night. I lay down every worry that tried to follow me home, every concern about tomorrow, every question still unanswered. They are safer in Your hands than in mine. Watch over my home tonight. Watch over those I love, near and far. Be close to everyone who finds this night hard, the lonely, the grieving, the afraid. Let them feel that they are not alone. And now, Lord, I will lie down in peace and sleep. Not because everything is settled, but because You alone make me dwell in safety. Into Your hands I give this night. Amen.

The most famous writer in England looked at this painting and called the boy Jesus ugly. Charles Dickens. 1850. In his own magazine, he described the child as a wry-necked, blubbering, red-headed boy, in a bed gown. He said the mother was so ugly she’d stand out in the worst gin shop in London. He wasn’t alone. Critics called it revolting. Disgusting. Blasphemous. They said the family looked sick, poor, malnourished, like people pulled out of a slum. Which is exactly what Millais meant them to look like. He painted it in a real carpenter’s shop off Oxford Street. He used his own father’s face for Joseph’s head and the body of a working carpenter, rough hands, veins standing out on the arms. Wood shavings on the floor. A dirty, cramped, ordinary room. Because that’s where God grew up. Mark 6:3. Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary? Now look at what’s happening in the shop. Joseph is building a door on the workbench. The boy has been helping. And He’s cut His hand on a nail. He’s holding the palm up. There’s blood in the center of it. And one drop has fallen onto His foot. The palm and the foot. A nail. Millais painted the cross into a workshop accident. Look at the rest. His grandmother Anne reaching across the bench for the pincers, to pull the nail out. Mary on her knees, offering her cheek for a kiss, her face already worried in a way a scratch doesn’t explain. On the right, a little boy in a camel-hair skirt, carrying a bowl of water. That’s John the Baptist. Bringing water to the Son of God. On the back wall, a ladder. And perched on the ladder, a white dove. The Spirit, waiting for the day at the river. Above the boy’s head, a carpenter’s triangle hangs on the wall. Three sides. One shape. And outside the open door, a flock of sheep, crowding in, pressing their faces toward the shop. Watching. Every object in that room is a prophecy. And then Millais did something stranger. When he exhibited the painting in 1850, he didn’t give it a title. No name. Just a verse from the Old Testament printed underneath it. Zechariah 13:6. And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends. The house of my friends. He was wounded at home before He was ever wounded at Calvary. By His own town. Nazareth tried to throw Him off a cliff the first time He preached there. By His own family, His brothers thought He’d lost His mind. By His own people. John 1:11. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. And by His own friends. One kissed Him in a garden. One swore he’d never met Him. The rest ran. Now read the next verse in Zechariah. The one Millais didn’t print, and didn’t have to. Zechariah 13:7. Awake, O sword, against my shepherd... smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered. Jesus quoted that one Himself, on the night He was arrested. Matthew 26:31. Go back to the painting. Look at the sheep at the door. Now the twist about Dickens. The most beloved writer of the age looked at a poor, plain, red-haired carpenter’s boy and said: that can’t be God. He’s too ugly. Too ordinary. Too common. Seven hundred years before Christ was born, Isaiah had already written Dickens’s review. Isaiah 53:2. He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. Verse 3. He is despised and rejected of men. Dickens did exactly what Isaiah said the world would do. He saw God in a carpenter’s shop, and he was offended. So did Nazareth. Mark 6:3 again: finish the verse. Is not this the carpenter... And they were offended at him. The world has always wanted a prettier Jesus. Clean robes. Soft light. A face from a greeting card. Something that doesn’t smell like sawdust and sweat. Millais refused to give them one. And for that, England called him a blasphemer. One more detail. Look at what Joseph is building. A door. John 10:9. I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved. The boy who’ll call Himself the Door cut His hand, making one. Now you. Some of you carry wounds you got in the house of your friends. Not from strangers. From the people who were supposed to be safe. A father. A husband. A pastor. A church that turned on you. A brother who believed the worst. Those are the wounds that don’t close, because they came from inside the walls. He has one of those. He knows what it is to be hurt at home. To be rejected by the town that watched you grow up. To be betrayed at a dinner table by a man who ate from the same dish. And He doesn’t hide the hand. In this painting, the boy holds it up. After the resurrection, the man holds it up. Thomas, reach thy finger hither. He kept the wounds. All of them. Including the ones from His friends. So if someone asks you what these wounds in your hands are, and you’ve got some. Show Him. He’ll show you His.