Thursday, February 19, 2015
John 6:70 "Did I not choose you, the Twelve? And yet one of you is a devil." He spoke of Judas the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the Twelve, was going to betray him.
THE BLISS OF NOT KNOWING
I imagine all of us, at one time or another, have desired to know what was coming in our own futures.
But imagine for a moment what it would really be like if God granted your wish and laid your whole life out before you on timeline. Every struggle. Every pain. Every heartache. Every disappointment. And you could mark them well.
If we actually knew the hard things that were destined to come our way, that knowledge would be a curse. The anticipation of painful events would weigh on our minds, making a double tragedy of every bad situation. First we'd agonize over what we knew was coming, and then that pain would come. In effect, we'd suffer every trouble twice.
Oh, it's true--sometimes ignorance is bliss.
But Jesus didn't feel the bliss of not knowing when it came to many of the things He suffered. He knew that Peter, one of His closest friends, was going to passionately deny that he had anything to do with Jesus. Jesus knew that Judas, one of His other apostles, was going to sell Him out to His enemies, betray Him with a kiss, the sign of close friendship.
A normal person in Jesus' shoes would have been broken. But He endured. Though driven to the point of death by sorrow over all that He was to suffer in the place of sinners, though sweating great drops of blood, Jesus remained to shoulder our burden. It was as if He suffered everything for us--twice.
This is love. To know the evil hearts of others and still to reach out to them. This is love. To know the immeasurable pain that was coming and to remain on that path to finish the task of redeeming sinners. This is love.
