Father, I can’t help but focus on tomorrow. We officially begin a new school year. There will be familiar faces and new faces as well. There will even be some faces that I saw regularly last year that I won’t see at all this year. May each of us – bus drivers, teachers, staff, and administration, have a good and fresh beginning. Amen.
Mark 15:21-23 (<<click to read the passage)
“A passerby named Simon, who was from Cyrene, was coming in from the countryside just then, and the soldiers forced him to carry Jesus’ cross.” v21
Can you image what Simon’s experience must have been like?
First of all, Cyrene wasn’t just down the road from Jerusalem. One source I read stated that by land it was roughly a 783-mile journey and walking 4 miles per hour for 8 hours a day, it would have taken him 32 days. Wow! A month-long hike to be in Jerusalem for the holiest of days in the Jewish calendar.
He may easily have been just a bystander waiting for the disturbing entourage to pass by. I would have made me uncomfortable for sure. Simon was there to worship and celebrate and then he had no choice but to watch the spectacle of blood and death as it passed by.
Then, minding his own business, he is suddenly pulled from the sidelines and thrust into the limelight! He was literally “forced to carry Jesus’ cross”! He had to have felt so many emotions! Fear – he hadn’t done anything wrong. Revulsion – think of what the cross must have felt like, dripping – completely saturated with another man’s blood. Pity – he probably didn’t know what Jesus was “guilty” of but His badly beaten body must have stirred sympathetic feelings. Loss – the moment Jesus’ blood touched him he became ceremonially unclean and would not have been allowed to participate in this special once a year only event, Passover. He had traveled so far…and now this.
Tradition holds that this was literally a life-changing event for Simon. We don’t know specifics but somehow, he must have come to accept Jesus as the Messiah. His sons are referenced in the passage in that they became well known in the early church. Rufus is specifically mentioned by Paul in Romans16:13.
All of us who have accepted Jesus as our savior has had to respond to Him being thrust upon us if you will. Initially, Simon had no choice but to obey but at some point, he chose to take up his own cross and follow Jesus…and we must take up our cross, as well.
Jesus proclaimed in Matthew 16:24-25,
Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to follow Me [as My disciple], he must deny himself [set aside selfish interests], and take up his cross [expressing a willingness to endure whatever may come] and follow Me [believing in Me, conforming to My example in living and, if need be, suffering or perhaps dying because of faith in Me]. For whoever wishes to save his life [in this world] will [eventually] lose it [through death], but whoever loses his life [in this world] for My sake will find it [that is, life with Me for all eternity]. (AMP)
Sept 2nd, 2019, Mon, 7:10 pm
