“So they had him at last. And he was taken out of the city, carrying his cross to the place known as “the Skull”. There they crucified him…” John 19:17-18 (TLB)
It was a scorching day as I was walking through Jerusalem. I passed a man carrying a cross. He had been bull whipped until the skin was almost sliding off his back. Even as this man, bent and broken, bleeding so badly that you could trace his steps back to Pontius Pilate’s palace, more than two miles away, by following the blood trail. Even as this man was walking toward his certain torturous death, he looked at me and SMILED. It was a smile filled with love. The condemned man SMILED at me. I understood, I do not know how, but I understood he wanted me to follow him.
So I fell in among the crowd following the man, a laughing, mocking, and spitting crowd. They cursed him repeatedly in Aramaic. They insulted his family, his birth, and his disciples. They tripped him, laughed when he hit the ground face first, splitting his nose open and releasing a torrent of blood. I watched as they raised the cross, drove nails through his hands and feet, and left him to bake as he slowly suffocated. I asked some in the crowd what this man had done. Surely, murder or rape, but no, they said, he claimed to be the Son of God, and Pilate said he found no guilt in him. As his spirit left his body, I thought, why? Why did an innocent man get treated so unjustly? Why did Jehovah allow this innocent man to suffer? Two distinct, yet separate, voices answered me in unison in my mind. YOU. BECAUSE I LOVE YOU, MY SON. Then sunlight streaming through my bedroom window awoke me. And I cried to start the day, marveling at the unbound less love of our Master.
Copyright 2007 Timothy E. Davis