The Journey
The man
stumbled over a loose rock and nearly fell.
Only his grip on the donkey’s reins kept him from succumbing to
gravity. The terrain was treacherous,
and he was exhausted from struggling for hours to keep his footing sure. His feet felt slick in his sandals, and he
knew it was more than just sweat which moistened his skin. He could feel every blister, both those that
had already ruptured and the newcomers recently formed. His back and shoulders ached from the effort
of coercing the stubborn animal to follow him.
His legs felt like jelly. His
hands were scraped raw by the rope, but blissfully numb to dull the pain.
The man quickly glanced back at the
donkey’s passenger to see if he had upset her balance. His betrothed gave him a tired yet confident
smile. It was a confidence the man did
not share nor did he believe he was worthy of.
If only she knew how terrified he was on the inside. If only she knew how much uncertainty and
anger waged a calamitous battle with trust and love in his mind. Schooling his face to tranquility and his mind
to stillness, he smiled back at her encouragingly. Turning his attention once again to the path
before them, he began to reflect on the impossible, unbelievable events which
had brought him to this place.
The man remembered well the morning
he had awoken, cold sweat drenching his body, from the dream. The dream of dreams. The vision of visions. The encounter in which The Lord had spoken to
him. He wasn’t sure he could ever forget
the shining glory of the angel who had delivered the unlikely instructions:
that he was to go ahead with his original plan to marry the young woman who was
now riding behind him. He hadn’t dared
to argue with the angel of the Lord. But
his mind, both during the dream and after he had awoken, boiled with
questions. How could he possibly take
her as his wife when she had been so blatantly, so obviously, so publicly
unfaithful to him. He cast a quick
glance back over his shoulder at the bulge in her abdomen and quickly averted
his eyes. He remembered well the
feelings of hurt and betrayal that had threatened to overwhelm his senses on
the day, some weeks prior to his dream, when he along with everyone else in
their village, had realized the truth: that she was with child prior to
marriage.
In spite of his intensely
conflicting emotions, the man was above all else honorable and righteous. Prior to his dream he had determined to
divorce her quietly rather than go forward with the prescribed penalty for adultery:
stoning. And after the dream, although
he was woefully unprepared to reconcile his own thoughts, one thing was
clear. The Lord had given him a command
and that command he would obey, though it might cost him his financial livlihood,
his friends, his family, his reputation, and if he lost his footing in these
treacherous mountains one more time, his life.
The man crested the last rise as
the final sparkling rays of sunlight slowly faded behind the hills in the
distance. Below him, the lights of Bethlehem twinkled like a
sea of stars. At last he had reached his
destination and could register as Caesar had commanded. He almost fell to his knees from the sheer
weight of relief that surged over him like a tidal wave. He silently thanked God for reaching his
destination. With one more furtive
glance at his fiance’s very pregnant belly, he silently wondered if this Child
was truly the one spoken of in the prophets as the Prince of Peace. Could He possibly straighten out the mess
that this life had become? Would the man
finally find the peace on earth he was looking for?
The Birth
The man stood like a stone
sentinel upon the outcropping of rock.
Above him the night sky was clear and still. The stars stood out in stark contrast against
the sable backdrop of infinity which covered the earth like a blanket. Below him in the valley the peaceful sounds
of his charges soothed his ears. Even in
the darkness he could easily pick out the sea of what looked like cotton spread
out below him. If cotton, then living
cotton. His weathered face creased in a
smile as the distant sound of a newborn lamb’s bleating floated to his ears,
riding the gust of wind which suddenly blew against him and threatened to rip
his cloak from his shoulders.
The
man’s momentary smile faded as he once again resumed his motionless vigil and
considered the options before him. There
was just no way around it that he could see.
The raiders last month had left him with half of the herd, half of his
family’s food, and all of a mountainous and virtually unpayable debt to his
employers who were now bereft of fifty percent of their investment. He thought of his young son, born just three
short years ago. What would his life be
like if he as well as the rest of his brothers and sisters had to grow up as indentured
servants due to the failure of their father to do his job? He glanced across to the outcrop his younger
brother had chosen as a perch for the night.
Just beyond him was the man’s eldest son, sharing for the first time
tonight in the male responsibilities of keeping watch over the flock. What would happen to all of them because he
had been derelict in his duty? The man’s
tortured thoughts taunted him endlessly.
Suddenly,
as if ten thousand bonfires had abruptly burst into flame in front of him, the
night sky erupted in a blaze of light.
The man toppled backwards off of his rock, sight completely taken for
several seconds as his eyes struggled with adjusting to the incredible
brilliance on display before him. With
his vision gradually clearing and shapes starting to come into focus once
again, he realized there was someone standing a few yards in front of him who
had not been there before. His addled
mind screamed at him that there was something wrong with what he was
seeing. Abruptly it dawned on him what
his senses had been trying to work out; the figure in front of him was standing
in mid-air at least 20 feet off the ground.
It appeared to be a human male, clothed in purest white, with a gentle
smile and a calm demeanor. This could be
nothing other than an angel of the Lord.
But it was the angel’s words, spoken in a serene and melodious voice,
which held the man spellbound.
“Do not be afraid; for behold, I
bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people; for today in
the city of David there has been born for you a savior, who is Christ the
Lord. This will be a sign for you: you
will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” All at once the air over the valley was
filled with an uncountable host of angels, stretching as far as sight could
travel; an impossibly vast army of unfathomable size. With a thunderous roar the man had only heard
equaled in his youth when he had visited the great sea, the angelic multitude
burst into spontaneous song: “Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace
among men with whom He is pleased.”
As suddenly as they had come the
angels vanished, leaving the valley covered in a silence that was unnaturally
still after the supernatural display which had just occurred. Tottering to his feet, the man stumbled
toward his son and brother. A flame of
hope had suddenly leaped into existence in his mind. Could this be the answer to his prayers? Could this savior the angels had spoken of
rescue him from his financial dilemma?
Spurring the others on before him, the man hurried back to the tents to
awaken his family. He had to go and see
this baby the angels had spoken of. Would
the man finally find the peace on earth he was looking for?
The Visit
The man
gazed intently through the sighting holes of his astrolabe. He nodded to himself satisfactorily. He and his companions were right on course
and schedule. Tomorrow would mark the
end of their long journey. He ducked
back into their spacious silk tent and eased his body down onto the pillows
arranged on the floor. He relaxed his
tired muscles with a sigh and studied the astrological tables spread out before
him. They had been traveling for many
months. It had been a difficult journey,
lacking most of the amenities he was used to at home in his palace. He thought back to their recent meeting with
King Herod. “Go and search carefully for
the Child; and when you have found Him, report to me, so that I too may come
and worship Him.”, the king had decreed.
The man couldn’t quite put a finger on it, but something in the king’s
demeanor had seemed off. His colleagues
had agreed with him. And the dreams they
had shared the night after seeing Herod had confirmed their suspicions that the
king was not to be trusted. The man
schooled his thoughts to stillness and sank into the abyss of sleep in
preparation for the culmination of their journey on the morrow.
Early
the next morning the man and his associates made their way slowly through the
town to the house where they had been advised that the Child and his parents
resided. With trembling hands they
knocked on the door. A grizzled and
rather careworn Jew greeted them. After
explaining who they were and their purpose for coming, he hesitantly allowed
them into the house. The man and his
colleagues eagerly followed. They had
been waiting for this moment for so long and had prepared so many mental images
of how this meeting would play itself out.
But nothing could have prepared them for the reality which greeted them.
A small
Child of perhaps one or two years of age sat calmly, almost expectantly, upon His
mother’s lap. The man had seen small
children before, although not of his own issue.
But this Child was different than anything else he had ever
experienced. The toddler gazed at them
with a penetrating stare completely out of place on His otherwise juvenile
features. The man felt like his body was
pierced through with a stake and his soul was laid out, raw and tender, exposed
for all to see its many faults and secret evils. The Child uttered no sound, made no move, but
just looked. And in that look the man
felt more completely undone than at any other time in his long life. His thoughts flashed to the Hebrew scriptures
he had studied in order to determine the location of this meeting. He reflected upon the ancient prophet Isaiah
and his response upon seeing a vision of God in His throne room. The man suddenly, in a manner vastly more
profound than if he had read it in a book, understood completely how the old
prophet must have felt. Almost without
conscious thought he felt his body imitating that of Isaiah; his knees hit the
floor first, and then the rest of his body and with more humility and
submission than he had ever thought possible, he bowed down and worshipped the
King of kings and Lord of lords with all of his might.
After
presenting the Child with their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and
departing for home, the man and his associates traveled in complete silence for
awhile, none of them willing to break into the ruminations of the others. As he rode, the man thought again of the
ancient Hebrew prophecies and he wondered, with the Child so small now, how
long would it take for Him to establish His kingdom, and would he and his
friends still be alive when it happened?
Would the man finally find the peace on earth he was looking for?
The Death
The man
idly toyed with his sword, passing it back and forth from one hand to the
other. He paid no mind to the fearful
looks of the Jews nearby. He ignored the
occasional screams and moans of the dying men behind him. He pretended not to notice the peculiar
stench which always accompanied the specter of impending death. Crucifixions were boring work, there was no
doubt about it. Sure, the build-up to it
had its fair share of entertainment. The
scourgings were usually fun. He and his
fellow soldiers often gambled over who could inflict the most damage to the
condemned person’s body, and of course competition was always engaging. This one had been an exceptional
contest. The man spared a glance behind
him at the three crosses erected on this cursed hilltop. The central cross held what was left of
something only passingly recognizable as a human body. The scourging crew had worked this one over
particularly hard, ripping huge chunks of flesh from both the front and back of
his body. They had perhaps gotten a
little carried away this time, caught up in almost a frenzy of excitement. But after all, he was just a filthy Jew, and
a condemned one at that, so who really cared?
But the
real problem with crucifixions were that they took so long. There was just nothing to do after getting
the prisoner nailed to the cross and mounting it in the ground. The rabble was almost always too frightened
to do anything worth suppressing. And
the blasted convicts usually took forever to actually die. Granted, that was kind of the point. But knowing all that didn’t curb the monotony
one bit.
A few
yards away the rest of the cohort was involved in a dicing game. They appeared to be playing for the clothes
of the middle prisoner. But the man
didn’t feel like dicing. For one thing
this unnatural darkness which had obscured the sun a few hours ago was really
getting on his nerves and giving him a headache. All he really wanted was to get this detail
over with and get on with his weekend.
His favorite tavern in the city was calling his name and he was
particularly thirsty today for some reason.
The man needed a few drinks to soothe his aching head.
For something to do, on a whim, he
turned to look at the soon to be corpses.
There was nothing special about the two men on the other two
crosses. They hadn’t suffered a
scourging and were in various states of the dying process, as normal. But the man in the middle, there was something
different about Him. True, He was barely
recognizable as a man with His face completely disfigured, chunks of flesh
missing all over His body, and covered seemingly in rivers of blood. But in spite of that, the man noticed
something about this prisoner. He had
lost count of the number of crucifixions he had taken part in and he was quite
good at gauging the level of pain a person was currently suffering. This one had suffered more physical abuse and
mutilation than any he had ever seen.
But even with all of that, the man hanging there and slowly dying seemed
to be in more agony than could be explained by His physical wounds. Most prisoners became partially accustomed to
the pain after a while, the mind working to block some of it out. But this one’s pain seemed to be actually
increasing rather than decreasing. He
was literally writhing on the cross, what was left of His face contorting and
twisting in a level of agony that the man usually saw during the peak of the
worst scourgings. Suddenly, without
warning, the prisoner cried out in a voice louder and more powerful than any
man in His condition had a right to, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken
me?” Shocked to stillness, the man
simply stood and stared. He was still
staring a few minutes later when, after taking some wine on a sponge that had
been lifted up to Him, He cried out again.
This time, impossibly, He was even louder than the last. “It is finished!”, He proclaimed. And then, with an inhuman level of calm and a
measured pace, He lowered His head down to His chest and became still.
The man was transfixed. This was not the way crucified people
died. They did not suddenly muster up
the lung capacity to cry out not once but twice and then seem to just decide to
surrender to death. A thought came to
him. It floated out of nowhere into his
consciousness. It began to take shape in
his mind. It captivated him. It refused to be ignored. Without realizing he was speaking the man
gave voice to this thought that was now more sure and solid and real and firm
than any thought he had ever had in his life.
“Truly this man was the Son of God!”, he uttered involuntarily. With his mind too clouded to think straight
he stumbled away from the crosses in the direction of the city. Perhaps those drinks would clear his head
from this unwelcome fog which had overtaken him. Gaining strength of will from his
determination to drown out what he had just witnessed he increased his pace
away from that awful hill. Would the man
finally find the peace on earth he was looking for?
The Ascension
The man’s
eyes watered from the brightness of the sky.
His neck muscles ached from holding his head in this unnatural
position. His mouth grew dry. But he refused to move. He was desperate to keep his eyes trained on
the Lord rising into the air as long as possible. He was only a speck now, and the man couldn’t
even be sure he was really even seeing Him any longer. But he held his gaze heavenward. He had always been a stubborn man, headstrong
and impetuous. It had gotten him into
trouble on a number of occasions. But
this time he didn’t care. He was
determined to keep looking until the Lord was completely out of sight.
Abruptly,
with his peripheral vision, he became aware of two men in white clothing
standing beside he and his brothers.
They said “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you
into heaven, will come in just the same way as you have watched Him go into
heaven.” Sheepishly, the man lowered his
gaze. All thoughts of his recent
betrayal as well as his many failures before that vanished in a clarity of
purpose that consumed his senses. “Alright
then, let’s get back to Jerusalem
like the Lord said. We need to wait for
the Helper He said would come to us.”
Without waiting for an answer from his companions he turned and began
walking in the direction of the city. He
was anxious to get to work. Undoubtedly,
after a few months the Lord would return to establish His kingdom. Then would the man finally find the peace on
earth he was looking for?
The Hatred
The man gazed out of his
living room window as the cold December snow spiraled lazily to the ground in
ever increasing volume. The fire on the
hearth to his left was blazing, fighting back the chill in the air
outside. His wispy white hair curled
haphazardly around his rheumy blue eyes.
His gnarled and age spotted hands carefully held his mug of cocoa so as
not to spill the hot liquid on either himself or the furniture. An occasional car drove slowly past the house
and out of sight down the street. The
man sat. And he remembered.
His had
been a life mostly devoid of peace. He
had barely known his mother, who had died when he was only four. A despairing father turned to alcohol instead
of his child when he needed him the most.
The drinking grew steadily worse as the years went by and then the abuse
came. The small, fractured, and
dysfunctional family attended church on Sundays and dwelled in the blackest
pits of despair the rest of the week. And
so the man was introduced early to the concept of pain and the absence of
love. When his father died from liver
failure just before his 19th birthday no one mourned him, least of
all the young man. Seeking to flee his
childhood demons he enlisted in the Army.
There he learned that the horrors of alcoholism were nothing compared to
the horrors of war. Seeing men, many of
them his friends, torn to pieces or robbed of their physical abilities or
stripped of any mental capacity soured him to the notion that life held any
sanctity at all. How could it, when it
was fragile and so easily taken away?
After
the war, the man got married as most young soldiers did upon returning
home. He got a job working for the
railroad and began to grow a family. He
thought that perhaps now he might finally wrest a semblance of peace out of
this hellish existence on earth. But
then, his illusions were shattered just as his young daughter’s spine was
shattered by the four thousand pound vehicular weapon wielded by yet another
drunken idiot who fate had allowed to live.
The man had almost no memory of the fateful night almost half a century
ago now, when he first saw his daughter in a coma, wrapped in bandages, with tubes
running into her from every direction; the only sign of life the incessant
bleating of the heart rate monitor beside the hospital bed. He had stumbled out of that place in a blind rage, found the driver of the car who had just been released on bail, and
bringing all of his military training to bear, had beaten the man to death with
his bare hands.
The man
passed the next four decades observing the continued decline of human
civilization behind the walls of a prison.
He watched as America
went to war first in Korea ,
then Vietnam . He watched as millions died at the hands of
the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia . He watched as millions more perished from
starvation under Mao Zedong’s Communist government in China . He watched as East Germans, attempting to
escape to the west, were gunned down by their own people. He watched as Presidents were assassinated,
riots were started, black men were lynched, murders uncounted were perpetrated,
rapes unconscionable were committed, and corruption ran rampant like a wildfire
in a drought parched forest.
When
the man was finally released from prison he found that his former wife wanted
nothing to do with him. His paralyzed
daughter, poisoned by the advice of her mother, refused to even see him. And so he sat and continued to watch the
world pass by, growing more bitter with each passing year. His most hated time of year was the month of
December. He was annually infuriated by
the extra crowds of mindless, lemming-like shoppers he had to contend with in
stores and the hordes of inept drivers he had to dodge on the streets. He was incensed at the aura of joy and
happiness that seemed to pervade people’s senses like a group psychosis during
this time of the year. But the man was,
without doubt, the most hatefully roused to fury by the grinning preachers he
would occasionally and accidentally stumble across as he rapidly changed
channels on his television. Every so
often, out of spite, he would stop and listen critically for a few moments as
they blathered on about Jesus and peace on earth and all of that rot. He remembered well the same lies that were
foisted upon him as a child. Life had
taught him better than that. Peace was a
myth that weak-minded fools clung to so as to escape the miserable reality of
their lives. The man had become
convinced decades ago that he would never find the peace on earth he was
looking for.
The Truth
People throughout history have sought for peace in their lives. Some have done it through the acquisition of wealth and power. Others have retreated from the world and gone into seclusion. Still others have used suicide as a misguided means of escape. At the time surrounding the birth of Jesus some had the misguided notion that the promised Messiah would bring them a material peace and freedom from whatever troubles beset them in their lives, be they relational, financial, political, or otherwise.
But the truth is that a true material level of peace will not be possible on this earth until the Messiah, King Jesus, comes a second time. The scriptures tell us in Revelation chapter 20 that when He comes again Christ will establish a literal physical kingdom which He will rule over unopposed. But until that time there can be no material peace because of the presence of sin and the corruption that all of creation is groaning under, as Romans chapter 8 makes clear. So what was the purpose of the first advent of the Son of God, if not to bring peace to this earth? The answer is, quite simply, that He came to bring peace in our hearts.
A relationship with Jesus Christ and the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit is the only way to experience peace that transcends this life and extends into eternity. Sure, someone can attain a level of happiness here and now through a marriage relationship, philanthropic efforts, financial success, or other means. But none of that persists past the point of physical death. As Matthew 6 reveals:
And King Solomon in the book of Ecclesiastes, with all of his wisdom and his riches and his incessant pursuit of physical pleasures, when he finally came to the end of himself, realized the truth. All material possessions are vanity. All of man's ambition is meaningless. All of life apart from God is a chasing after the wind.
But in contrast to this bleak picture, we find the soothing words of almighty God. He assures us that whoever believes in His son will not perish, but will have eternal life. And what is this sort of life? What is it that we have to look forward to? Jesus said in John 17 that eternal life is:
And why would we want to spend the rest of eternity getting to know someone? Because the Psalmist says that the loving-kindness of God never ceases and that His compassion never fails and that they are new every morning! God is so infinitely vast in His being that we will spend forever experiencing Him and it will never grow old. It will never grow stale. It will never be burdensome. It will never fade. The experience of knowing God is a never ending cornucopia of delights and pleasures and ecstasies.
And we can begin that most delightful of journeys now! We don't have to wait another day. If we confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord (which means placing Him at the center of our lives and surrendering our petty ambitions to be joyfully swallowed by His divine will) and believe in our hearts that God raised Him from the dead (thus placing our hope for the future not in ourselves and our own abilities but rather in the promise of resurrection and glorification to come) then we will be saved! This is the only way to experience true peace in this life and on this earth. And not this present existence only but for all of eternity. Will you place your faith and trust in Jesus right now and find the peace that you are looking for?
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