On April 29, 1992 truck driver Reginald Denny took a short cut through Los Angeles on his way to deliver 27 tons of sand to its destination. Without a radio in his truck, he was unaware that rioting had broken out along his intended route, the result of the acquittal of police officers accused of police brutality from an incident a year earlier.

At an intersection a group of men forced Denny to stop his truck. He was pulled from the cab and nearly beaten to death as a TV station helicopter overhead streamed the attack live. Denny was kicked and repeatedly struck with various objects, including a hammer and a brick.

After the beating, good Samaritans drove Denny to a nearby hospital, where he was nearly dead upon arrival. He could not breathe, and he was unconscious. He an expanding blood clot below the right side of the skull pressing against his brain, and it was determined that it was life threatening and had to be removed.

Denny's skull was fractured in 91 places and pushed into his brain. His left eye was so badly dislocated that it would have fallen into his sinus cavity had the surgeons not replaced the crushed bone with a piece of plastic.

Denny was hospitalized 33 days. His ability to speak and drive were affected by the attack, and he had to undergo years of rehabilitative therapy. However, he survived and how lives in Arizona, where he works as a mechanic.

Denny's forehead remains marred from the attack with a dent that never healed. His daughter calls him "Reginald Denty" as a result.

As bad as Reginald Denny's beating was, his outward appearance did not match that of another man nearly 2000 earlier: Jesus of Nazareth, whose flesh was ripped open and also torn from His body via a scourging prior to His crucifixion. The prophet Isaiah tells us:

"Just as many were astonished at you, so His visage was marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men" (Isaiah 52:14).

And that beating Jesus suffered was only part of His total sacrifice for us, culminating in His death on the stake for our sins.

With these thoughts I wish us all a meaningful and joyous Passover and Feast of Unleavened Bread.