During Lent, I am taking a journey with Jesus to the cross using a book called Journey With Jesus by Larry Warner. I am going to periodically post thoughts on that journey here.
The book invites me to enter into Jesus’s suffering and sorrows and to recognize how he let go of his divinity for his humanity. The journey is both self- and God-revelatory. One of the meditations that meant much to me was one when Jesus is being arrested and hauled away. In the meditation, I am a disciple getting ready to flee. I am to imagine what is in Jesus’s eyes as they catch mine. What’s in that quick glance? For years I’ve imagined disappointment and grief, never anger, but a measure of sorrow at my failure. But this time, that’s not what I saw. I saw understanding, sympathy for my weakness, and a look that says, “I know and understand, and I love you still. Don’t worry. I’ve got this.” And if his hands had not been bound, he would have given me a thumbs-up. There’s no doubt he would have appreciated a little more courage and faithfulness from me, from us all, but he already knew we would be scattered. He saw it and told us.
Later, of course, the disciples would be filled with the Spirit, and that power would give them an ability to resist sin that they had not known before. They would still fail, but they would understand God’s grace to them in Christ and would be able to recall the cross as that visible reminder of his love and forgiveness. They eventually would be able to die and give their lives away for Him and the Gospel of the Kingdom of God.
If you are trying to follow Jesus closely, you want more from your life in God. Along the way, God has given you a glimpse and a hope of what life with Him might look like. Maybe you read it in a book or in a person’s life, saw it in a movie or heard it in a song. That desire is from God. So, whatever your journey might be, “Please, press on!”
Phil. 3:8, 20-21 NASB20 … I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord…but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. … For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; who will transform the body of our lowly condition into conformity with His glorious body, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.
An Invitation to Wonder 