Thursday 5 Apr 2012

Thursday Reading: Luke 19:41-48

Key Verse: Luke 19:41
41  And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it,

Devotion:
We can look on this verse and think about the love that Christ had because He was brought to tears by the thought of what was to unfold but that would fall short of the love that Christ was actually showing at this stage. In our all-to-short study of love over the past weeks we have seen many aspects of what love is and one of those that we need to be reminded of here of is not just that Christ was willing to give His life, but that He was also chastising the people. When we do love someone we should not allow them to go ahead and do things that are unlawful and that is exactly what Christ was facing now.

His compassion for the people was shown by the fact that He wept for them before He came into their midst. But He also knew that He had to come and sort out so many people as well. He knew that He had a task to do and that nothing should detract from that task, but He also knew that He could not stand by whilst the people desecrated the temple through their evil deeds being done there.

It saddens me to see just how much this country has forgotten what Easter is all about. It saddens me to see so much being done to promote a festival that has little or nothing to do with Christ’s death, burial and resurrection. And then it frightens me to see how much pressure is put on our children to spend what little money they have in promoting a commercial event; the same sort of event that Christ came to clear out of the temple that day He arrived there!

We are faced with people who don’t care for Jesus and what He did. We are faced with people whose love for money has taken them far beyond what we would accept as reasonable behaviour. And yet we all stand by and watch as they continue their trade right in front of our Lord who willingly came to give His life in our stead. “Lord, grant us strength that we may stand and be counted as Children of God” is what we need to be doing so that we can come forward and show people that we do care about what has happened because we do love them, even though they may not love us back. But by re-starting that circle of love we will be able to win some people back to the truth so that they can find out just How much Jesus should mean to them at this time of year!

Points to Ponder:
Will you continue to let people go their own way?

Or will you stand up with Jesus?