It has been a couple of days since our traveler had heard of the Messiah washing the feet of the deciples. Now he was wandering through the streets. He had heard that the deciples had been seen recently around the city and he hoped he might finally meet his Messiah.
He sees a child weeping near the gates to a house and he stops to ask what is wrong.
The child looks at him, “oh sir, you must be the only man in the city who has not heard the terrible news. They have arrested Him. Jesus. They have taken Him to trial before the priests.”
John 18:1-9 ESV
[1] When Jesus had spoken these words, he went out with his disciples across the brook Kidron, where there was a garden, which he and his disciples entered. [2] Now Judas, who betrayed him, also knew the place, for Jesus often met there with his disciples. [3] So Judas, having procured a band of soldiers and some officers from the chief priests and the Pharisees, went there with lanterns and torches and weapons. [4] Then Jesus, knowing all that would happen to him, came forward and said to them, “Whom do you seek?” [5] They answered him, “Jesus of Nazareth.” Jesus said to them, “I am he.” Judas, who betrayed him, was standing with them. [6] When Jesus said to them, “I am he,” they drew back and fell to the ground. [7] So he asked them again, “Whom do you seek?” And they said, “Jesus of Nazareth.” [8] Jesus answered, “I told you that I am he. So, if you seek me, let these men go.” [9] This was to fulfill the word that he had spoken: “Of those whom you gave me I have lost not one.”
Our traveler staggers back and walks away without speaking. As he turns the corner and goes out of sight, his knees buckle and he falls to the dirt. Tears fall from his eyes without mercy, “Why?” He screams, “Why have you done this? We need you and you have let yourself be…” he shakes his head, “I say ‘who am I to question?’ Then you do this. I was so close. What was I searching for if you are gone?”
We have been there. Where were you God? What was the point? Why have you let me fall? The answers may never come. One thing we will never be able to ask God is ‘why did you leave me?’ Oh, many have asked this, but there is no true grounds for it, because Jesus never leaves us. I cannot imagine being one of the deciples or someone who had followed and searched after Jesus, in those last days. Suddenly the only one who mattered, who had shown Himself God, was being tortured and killed. They would have felt like they had lost everything. We are in last days too, but of a different kind. Yet in our last days Jesus is risen and we have the Holy Spirit. All the deciples had were His words to cling to, and in the moments of what they witnessed, those words faded from their hearts as grief took their place. We have been there. We know the promises of God, but grief takes over and we forget what He has said. We doubt. We return to fishing because we no longer know what to do with ourselves. We were happy, then one night in a garden destroyed it. Isn’t that how it all began too? We were happy in the garden where God walked, then a lie broke the stillness. Here a betrayal broke the stillness. It would have felt like drowning endlessly in darkness. Then the third day came.
We all we have experiences like the deciples in the garden (hopefully we will never experience what Jesus Himself went through in that garden. Yet, I know some have faced such pain that they have expressed a knowledge of Jesus’s feelings.) Yet after the garden, the cross and the tomb, comes the upper room and the day on the shore. The pain comes, but Jesus will always be there.
Carried in the cross 