Skip to main content

No Hiding

 "He came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives" ~ Luke 22:39, emphasis mine

When we think of the power Christ had to prevent His crucifixion, we often think of the army of angels that he had at His command or the power over nature he held. Any one of the people who were responsible for His death could have been smote, scattered, or suddenly thrown into confusion with just one word from His mouth. When passersby mocked Him, they were right in knowing about His power to save others, but wrong in thinking He could not save Himself. A devotion I read Sunday morning caused me to think of another power He had that could have saved Him if He had chosen to use it: the power to choose a hidden spot to pray.

The verse quoted above tells us that going to the Mount of Olives to pray was something he did often. According to the author of the devotion, "it was easy for the authorities to find Jesus to arrest him." Another verse says, "Now Judas, who betrayed him, also knew the place, because Jesus often met there with his disciples." (John 18:2) Before He was even in a position to choose not to use His power to smite His tormentors, He chose to offer up His final, desperate prayers to His Father in a place He knew He would be found.

So why would He do such a thing? Saving Himself wouldn't have been difficult had He just prayed somewhere else. The reason He made Himself easy to find is that as much as He wished for another way to win our salvation, He refused to stand in the way of God's will by hiding Himself from His destiny. 

In his song "Nails", Matty Mullins talks about how Christ's love for us held Him to the cross rather than the nails the Roman soldiers drove through His wrists. His love was also what made Him choose to make His final appeal to God in a place where Judas would find Him so he could betray Him. He knew that if He were never found, we would never be saved, and He couldn't let that happen. He had to die a death he didn't deserve to give us the eternal life we could never earn.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Outside Looking In

(My post Life>Death  chronicles my struggle with suicidal depression. This story is based on the vision God used to save my life.) It all started after the knife sliced through my wrist. As I watched my life drain away, I felt a sense of peace. I knew my pain was finally over. Soft arms lifted me up and carried me off to Heaven. There I watched as my parents found my body. They started to cry, which I had expected. What I hadn't expected was what they were saying. "What did we do wrong?" they cried out. "Nothing!" I screamed. "You did nothing wrong!" But they couldn't hear me. What had I done? As my friends and other family members found out about my death, they said the same thing, and I continued screaming that it wasn't their fault. Their reactions caused me to be in agony, which struck me as strange. If indeed I was in Heaven, wasn't I supposed to be pain free? That is what I had always been taught. Then came my funeral. It...
2 comments
Read more

Scars in Heaven

 "The thought that makes me smile now Even as the tears fall down Is that the only scars in Heaven Are on the hands that hold you now." ~ " Scars in Heaven " - Casting Crowns     The sermon this past Sunday was about Jesus appearing to His disciples after the Resurrection, Thomas not being there, and his subsequent doubt. While this is a typical sermon topic for the Sunday after Easter, this time I started thinking about how this story relates to the song quoted above. What Thomas needed to see to believe in the Resurrection were the scars on Christ's body.     Revelation 21:4 states, "Death will be no more, mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away." To me, that means that any limitations we had in our lives, including our scars, are gone once we enter those pearly gates. I know a woman who struggled with mobility problems her whole life, which required her to wear ugly orthopedic shoes. After she died earlier...
Post a Comment
Read more

Just a Girl

"And he came and said to her 'Greetings, favored one. The Lord is with you.'" - Luke 1:28 Last week we celebrated the birth of our Savior, and people around the world read about the miracle of His conception, the trip to Bethlehem, the shepherds, the angels, and the wise men. There are many characters in this wonderful story of our faith, but I want to focus on one in particular: His mother Mary. Of all of them, she was the first to know about what was about to take place, and the first to have to accept her part in the story. Most of the images depicting Mary show a lady in her mid-twenties at least, the age many would associate with someone engaged to be married. However, this is likely not the case. In that time, it was common for a girl to become betrothed when she was still in her early teens, often to a man who was much older and had already established a career. Jewish betrothal was as binding as a marriage, with the only difference being that the man had n...
Post a Comment
Read more