Stop! Wait! What?!

It’s a glorious day, Father! I try to be grateful for each day You so graciously give me but days like this lend themselves so well to praise!
Mark 8:31-33 (<<click to read the passage)
I truly feel that if I had been a disciple of Jesus that this would have the chain of events,
Then Jesus began to tell them that the Son of Man must suffer many terrible things and be rejected by the elders, the leading priests, and the teachers of religious law. He would be killed… v31a
That’s it.
Whoa…whoa! Stop! Wait! What?!
Isn’t that what we all would have heard? Nothing else after “killed” would have even registered! At this point in time, after roughly three years with this vibrant young prophet leading them, this would have been the absolute last thing they would have expected to hear Him say.
It would be like slamming on your brakes because something had run out in front of your car! At that moment, nothing else would have mattered! They had to realize that Jesus’ relationship with the religious leaders of the Jewish faith was tense and extremely uncomfortable for them but killed!
They couldn’t do that! They had no right! Jesus had done nothing wrong…except to put the windbags in their place! He had touched so many lives! He had shown love in so many situations where rejection would have been the only reasonable reaction! He had healed hundreds…thousands even! They won’t get away with it!
Would we have thought any less? No. Our defenses would have been up in a heartbeat! This. Would. Not. Happen. Period!
…but it would… …it had to….
Lord Jesus, as I write tears are welling up in my eyes… Your sacrifice had to take place, for without it I would be lost. I would have been damned to eternal separation from You. Just thanking You is too paltry for what You did. The least I can do – and it is as I have done for many years – is to give myself daily over to You. All blessing and honor and praise to You, my Lord and Savior!

May 8^th, 2019, Wed, 1:06 pm