The Church has set aside forty-six days before Easter, which starts on Ash Wednesday, as a time to remember the suffering of Christ. We do not know what happened to Jesus a year before His arrest and crucifixion.  From the Gospel of John, we know what happened to Him six days before His arrest and from the Gospel of Matthew we know what happened to him two days before His arrest. 

Sometimes I wonder what went through His mind a year or two prior to His crucifixion.  Being fully human, from time to time He must have thought of His death on the cross.  It makes me think, physically Jesus suffered for a day, but emotionally He must have suffered for years.  But each day He suffered, He thought of us.  He came to die for us, so we need not die for our sins, and offered His life to His Father as an atonement for our sins. Regardless of how He felt, this thought and this mission kept Him going to Golgotha. 

For the next four weeks I will preach from the twenty-sixth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew.  I call this series, The Two Darkest Days in the Life of Jesus.  But as I previously mentioned, even in the darkest days, God’s light still shines, as we can see in the life of Jesus.  There was the anointing, there was Holy Communion, there was a special time of prayer, before darkness came.  There was enough light to shine in the dark and there was enough power to walk in the dark.

God does not always give us sunlight to see; sometimes He gives us light from a tiny candle so we can learn to see not by sight but by faith.  I’m sure we have all been there before, where we cannot see what’s going on and what’s ahead, where we can only pray.  But it’s then we discovered that in prayer we see God, we see His love, and we see His power.  It’s then we learned that it’s enough we see God and experience His love. We need not see what’s ahead, so don’t. 

Pastor Paul