Logic doesn’t always serve me well.
Luke 23: 44-46 44 It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, 45 for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. 46 Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” When he had said this, he breathed his last.
The skeptic in me wants to explain things away. I struggle sometimes to just accept what I’m told, even what I see. Unfortunately all this comes to bear even as I read the Bible.
I have experienced an eclipse (not one lasting 3 hours thankfully so I can’t imagine this) and I have no idea how cold it would get if the sun actually went out for three hours. I would guess it would be curtains for all of us (no pun intended). I’ve also seen what appeared to be the spontaneous rendering of something as it was hanging. Okay it was a cobweb, but I can see how, if the curtain were old and perhaps the cold from the sun not shining…. You’re right I’m grasping.
However, given all that skepticism and all those efforts to explain away what happened when Jesus died I can’t deflect or logic away Luke’s account of Jesus’s final breath. I don’t think there’s a more raw, sincere and honest moment that comes to mind in the bible for me.
Jesus the man, God in the flesh, the Spirit living and breathing among us was done. His earthly body had taken all that it could bear. His will could no longer keep his heart beating, or his lungs bringing air in and out. I’d like to think that his last words before he died were triumphant ones but they might not have been (there’s that reasoning thing creeping back in).
You see at this point Jesus had never been more human. Though he had to know he had done what he had been sent to do the end for any of us humans is rarely peaceful. His words may have sounded more broken than whole. His manner might have been more of one who cannot take any more. The words could have been more resolute than a revelation. I’ll never know. I wasn’t there.
What I can know is that because the man lived and more so, because he died, I have no choice but to accept the good news.
The Everyday Question: What will it take for you to accept what the Bible says?
Unfortunately the older we get sometimes the more jaded we get. Maybe you know someone who has become this way. If you think this might help them see this, please share it with them. The icons are below to do so.
On Saturdays I send an email to my subscribers with links to that week’s posts. If you would like to receive that, just click here.
If you would like to read more you can click this and you will be sent back to the home page.