Day 109

Joshua 19:1–20:9; Luke 19:28-48; Psalm 88:1-18; Proverbs 13:12-14

OF THE MANY sad scenes found in the Scriptures, we encountered a very personal and tear-filled one in Luke’s Gospel today. Jesus had made the eighteen-mile hike uphill from Jericho to Jerusalem, and a grand celebration surrounded Him. This later became known as Jesus’ Triumphal Entry, and we commemorate the event on Palm Sunday each year. The story took a stark turn once Jesus crested the Mount of Olives and gazed on Jerusalem. From His vantage point, He would have been looking directly across the Kidron valley and onto the Temple of the Highest God.

He began to weep over the city and its people: “How I wish today that you of all people would understand the way to peace. But now it is too late, and peace is hidden from your eyes” (Luke 19:42).

Jesus foretold a time when Jerusalem would come under siege and be destroyed. He was correct. A few short decades later, Jerusalem would be utterly destroyed and turned to rubble by the Roman Empire.

What caused this great emotion in Jesus? Perhaps the overwhelming weight of what He was soon to endure. More than likely that played a role. But He also mourned what could have been. Jesus had come showing the ways of the Kingdom, a Kingdom that the people had been crying out to God for. He was the answer to their prayer, and throughout His ministry, He continually revealed what they were looking for. But they could not visualize anything other than the military overthrow of the global superpower that had occupied their ancestral territory. In days, the people Jesus loved would reject and kill Him, and in mere decades, they would attempt the kind of revolt they were looking for Him to lead. The results would ultimately be catastrophic —Jerusalem would be leveled, and the Temple would be demolished.

In our own lives, we often walk the same path. We may cry out to God to arrange a specific set of circumstances that we are striving for. He may answer us by showing a better way, but we’re so tethered to our own personal assumptions and expectations that we’re blinded to God’s movement. He may come to our rescue, but we aren’t paying attention. Eventually, we may attempt to force our will into the situation, to our own peril, and sometimes to our own downfall.

This kind of behavior is sad enough to make God cry. That is a sobering thought —one that should stop us. We must trust God. A statement like that often looks like an oversimplification. But cliché or not, it is the absolute truth. We will never navigate the ways of the Kingdom Jesus revealed without an intimate relationship with God and complete trust as we walk with Him.

MEDITATION:

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a dream fulfilled is a tree of life.