Behold, the lamb!

Picture a lamb. Weak, stumbling up a hill, following his shepherd toward the altar on which the lamb will die. He knows today is different from all the others. Usually one in a large flock on a grassy hillside, today he is alone with the shepherd struggling toward the top of a rocky cliff. He follows the shepherd until his wobbly knees can support him no longer; the shepherd carries him on. At the top of the hill, the lamb lays himself on the altar, where he is pierced and left lifeless. Behold, the lamb.

Picture a woman. Kneeling outside an open tomb. Her tears glisten with the rising sun. She came just to see him one more time, to anoint his lifeless body, but he is gone. She weaps. Her tears fall soft into the blood-stained wool of a lamb. He nuzzles close and dries her tears. She stands, smiles, and turns to go, leaving the lamb alone and alive at the empty tomb. Behold, the lamb!

Picture a man. Kneeling before a king, in whose hand is a sealed scroll. Finding the seals to be unbreakable, the man cries with despair. His tears fall to the throne room floor and flow to the feet of a lamb. Wounded but strong, the lamb takes his place on the throne and, one by one, breaks the unbreakable seals, forever loosing the bonds of evil, forever victorious. Behold, the lamb!

May we truly behold the Lamb this Resurrection Sunday.
Joy!
-mo

for Mary so loved

I've been thinking a lot in the last couple of days about the sacrifice Mary made at Easter. We talk often of the miracle of God's giving His son for us. We usually fail to mention, though, that Mary also gave her son. He was not her only begotten, but He was her begotten.

She was with him from his earthly beginning in Bethlehem. She worried and ran back for him when he was left in the temple. She believed in his ability to fix things and prodded him to perform his first public miracle at that wedding in Cana. She was one of his closest followers, all the way to the cross.

Throughout his life, Mary must have encountered so much she didn't understand, but her attitude seemed always the same as it had been at the beginning of their journey together: "Let it be."

On that first Good Friday, Mary watched from the front of the crowd as her son was mocked, beaten, spat upon, and led to his death. In that darkest of moments, when even his Father forsook him, Jesus' mother stood near. She looked on with grief of motherly proportion.

I wonder if his life replayed in her mind. I wonder if she remembered the manger, the shepherds, the kings. As she looked up at the nails in his hands and feet, I wonder if she remembered when Joseph taught their son just the right stroke to drive the nails that would hold together his first hand-crafted table or chair. When he cried out in lonely anguish, did she remember the crowds who were there for his baptism, his miracles, his hillside teachings?

Whatever her thoughts at the foot of the cross that day, Mary must have known there was something special about the man dying before her. Though in her grief he was just her son, in her heart she knew he was the Savior. And Mary gave her son.
-mo