x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
12 friends have opened a study shared with them.
As I walked through Kelly Ingram Park in Birmingham, I looked up and saw The Foot Soldier. Ronald McDowell's statue shows a young black boy being manhandled by a stern officer as a ferocious dog lunges at his chest. When police disrupted the children's march in 1963, they thought they'd won. But now their suffering sits on a bronze pedestal, forcing us to look up at them and give them honor.
Read John 12:20-36
Inside the 16th Street Baptist Church, boys and girls watched a video of their people being assaulted at lunch counters. They'd heard stories of lynchings. They'd prepared themselves for nonviolence. They felt the terror, they worshipped, and then they opened the church doors and walked toward the firehoses. Jesus has come to his hour, and his glory will be strangely revealed through suffering. His soul isn't troubled in a sentimental way. His eyes dilate with revulsion and horror. He's fully conscious of the cost. So, should Jesus ask for deliverance? No. He dismisses even the suggestion of self-preservation because he has come to deliver. I've planted many seeds in the ground. It's never bothered me that they will break open and be destroyed to create plants. Still, I would want to stay inside the church and sing more songs. I don't know if I could allow my kids to walk out those church doors. But Jesus says that self-preservation is spiritual death. Could we hear God glorifying his name as children screamed? The Jews and Greeks who want to see Jesus at a political parade will miss the point, because the only way to see Jesus is to look at him in agony on the cross. As his life is cracked open for us, his light shines in the darkness, and he transforms us into the children of God. In Kelly Ingram Park, the suffering is the monument. In Jerusalem, the cross is the throne.
Jesus immediately dismissed the idea of self-preservation. What's your gut reaction?
Where in your life right now are you staying inside the church, singing one more song?
What would you have to believe about Jesus to walk out the doors?
Take a walk with a friend this week. While you're walking, take turns finishing this sentence out loud: "The thing I'd rather stay inside the church than face is _____."
In February 1941, during the German bombing of London in World War II, James Welch of the British Broadcasting...
Check your email
Tap the link inside to sign in and start receiving The Daily.
Didn't see it? Check your spam folder.