Our baby boy will be twenty-six when his son is born. He has been blessed with a wife and daughter who adore him, and now God has chosen to give him a baby boy of his own. He has no idea what adventures await. We surely didn’t!
One thing my husband and I have always agreed on is that our children belong first to God. We were entrusted with them for a time. Every day of their lives were written in God’s book before their birth. (Psalm 139:16) Early in Jacob’s life, our trust in God was tested. At only ten days, he was hospitalized with meningitis. Two weeks later, we took him home again and for thirteen years, he was all boy. Then the seizures started.
For the next six years, he was tested and medicated, to no avail. On the week of his nineteenth birthday, he had the opportunity to be tested to see if he was a candidate for brain surgery. He made it through the two preliminary procedures and the resection, where the scar tissue was carefully removed from his brain.
We were warned that this surgery would cause the same kinds of side effects as any brain trauma from an accident, and we thought we had prepared ourselves, but when his speech slurred like someone who’d had a stroke and he couldn’t read a line from a child’s book, we were badly shaken. I’ll never forget my husband’s first words to me as he pulled me aside. “We’ve made a huge mistake!”
What must Mary have been thinking as she stood at the foot of the cross? She knew what Gabriel told her about who Jesus was before He was conceived. She had seen his miracles, at least His first at the wedding at Cana. She was surely there among the disciples when He taught the crowds. He said He must suffer and be killed and rise on the third day, but could she hear in that moment anything beyond her own understanding of what was to come? How many times in the moment are we unaware of ourselves, unfamiliar with our own motives, blind to what we know to be true but can’t accept?
”The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?
I, the Lord, search the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve.”
Jeremiah 17:9-10 NIV
https://bible.com/bible/111/jer.17.9-10.NIV
“Never, Lord!” is such an obvious contradiction. Peter earned a stern reprimand when he paired those words to address Jesus as Jesus set out resolutely toward Jerusalem (Matthew 16:22-23) but to proclaim Jesus as Lord, as Peter had only recently done in grand fashion, saying, “You are the Messiah, Son of the Living God,” is to surrender completely to His authority, to rely on His strength, and to trust Him even when nothing makes sense.
Jesus’s final words on the cross must have given Mary and those closest to Him pause, maybe even caused them to wonder as we did, “have we made a huge mistake?”
Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.“
Luke 23:34 NIV
https://bible.com/bible/111/luk.23.34.NIV
”When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.“
John 19:30 NIV
https://bible.com/bible/111/jhn.19.30.NIV
”In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.
And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.“
Romans 8:26-28 NIV
https://bible.com/bible/111/rom.8.28.NIV
Every day of his life on earth, Jesus knew He was fulfilling prophecy. Jesus knew He was the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, as John announced at His baptism. Jesus was aware that He was about His Father’s business from His childhood. He ministered for three years, a model of servant leadership, even washing His disciples feet to set us an example, all the time knowing He is King of all kings, rightly enthroned by the Father for all time and eternity. He submitted to death on a Roman cross at the hands of a Jewish mob with perfect intention. Never for a moment did He experience doubt, regret, or remorse. He was present with the Father when Gabriel made the fated visit to the Virgin Mary. His own purpose was being fulfilled now in human history.
Jesus replied, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.
Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.
Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!”
Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.”
The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him.
Jesus said, “This voice was for your benefit, not mine. Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”“
John 12:23-24, 27-32 NIV
https://bible.com/bible/111/jhn.12.23-32.NIV
”For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.“
John 3:16 NIV
https://bible.com/bible/111/jhn.3.16.NIV
What difference does it make, knowing Jesus as Lord? Make no mistake, you will see Him again. ”However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8 NIV
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