Sometimes I just want to see to the other side before I get there. I confess to reading the last page of a book to calm my nerves in the middle, or wanting to know the end of a movie before I watch it. I would like to know tomorrow’s outcome for what I am going through today.
“I am telling you this now, before it takes place, that when it does take place you may believe that I am He.” John 13:19 (ESV)
We are in the weirdest time. But we aren’t left without direction. How can we know what to expect? How will we know how to act, to respond, to live? What will the result of these days be?
Jesus avoided certain crowds, certain places because “His time had not yet come.”
Jesus’ death loomed before Him, troubling Him yet bringing determined resolution as He set His face toward Jerusalem. The scene shifted and Jesus knew His time had come. He moved toward the cross.
Jesus’ last supper with his beloved disciples was something He’d looked forward to, yearned for. He approached the dinner knowing Judas’ heart had already been invaded by the devil himself. The other disciples had not singled out Judas, had not picked up on an attitude, resentment from the Master or underlying dislike.
Jesus unwrapped his outer garment and laid it down, put a towel around his waist then knelt down and washed the feet of his disciples. One by one.
“Never.” Peter declared, when Jesus came to him, “You shall never wash my feet.”
“If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.”
“Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head.”
Jesus surveyed perhaps with sorrow, most certainly with deep love, his flock of twelve at the table. For, “he loved them to the end.”
He loved them all. No exceptions. All twelve. Three years He’d walked, talked and loved them yet from the beginning He knew which one would betray Him.
“Not all of you are clean,” he said.
“Wash one another’s feet.”
And Jesus washed Judas’ feet.
“I am telling you this now, before it takes place, that when it does take place you may believe that I am He.” John 13:19 (ESV)
Time. The Father created it, holds it and moves it toward His purposes.
Chaos outside comes from chaos inside
God has given us what we need. He has provided us with strength and armor. There is nothing ahead for which He has not prepared us previously in His Word, by His life and certainly by His death.
We must with the attitude of Christ wash the feet even of Judas when we are called to do so.
Chaos outside comes from chaos inside. Scripture draws distinct lines of right and wrong, not affirming or excusing sin, yet without cancelling our mandate to love humbly as Jesus did.
I don’t know what will happen. None of us do, but I get this. God created time. He holds it. He moves it toward His purposes.
No matter the chaos outside my own walls, I prepare inside my own heart. Now is the time to fortify with the Word of God in order to be ready before it, whatever that may be, takes place. I must take God’s instruction, digest it, and be nourished by it. This is how to stand fast. This is how to continue in belief along the journey, no matter what lies ahead.
our hope worth dying for
The world is desperately craving a cause for which to live. As much as we’d like to fast forward to the end of this chapter, to see 2020 in the rearview mirror, we can’t. I don’t know what believers will face. But I know our hope in Christ is worth dying for.
Because “I am telling you this now, before it takes place, that when it does take place you may believe that I am He.”
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