Tuesday: “Jesus Began” Almost Everything!
WEEK 1
TUESDAY
“JESUS BEGAN” ALMOST EVERYTHING!
Luke 4:16-21
Luke, the author of the Gospel of Luke and the author of Acts, opens the account with these words: “In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach” (Acts 1:1 RSV). Note the word “began.” The life and teaching and death and resurrection of Jesus were but a beginning, a prelude, the first chapter of a Book. This Book will never be finally written with finis at the end; it will eternally be in the writing, the Lamb’s Book of Life.
The test of a person’s life is this: Is the person dead when dead? Or does that person live on with greater power after death? Judged by that test, Jesus has really lived; for he was more powerful after his death than before. During his lifetime, through incessant teaching and preaching, he gathered at the highest estimate “five hundred brothers and sisters” (1 Cor 15:6); but after his death he drew, through people filled with himself, five thousand disciples in a single day.
When Jesus was about to die upon the cross, he cried, “It is finished” (John 19:30 KJV). Something was finished that day that will never have to be done again. We were reconciled to God by that offering of himself; once offered, our redemption was sealed. But while something was finished, something was left unfinished and will be forever unfinished until we awake in his likeness. Even then will it be finished? I question.
“Jesus began”—what?—everything that is now working in humanity for the uplift and renewal of the human race. Trace it back to its origin and you will come out at the foot of the cross. The high-school young people of Helsinki, Finland, go dressed in their school uniforms once a year to a national cemetery; and marching up to a knoll, they lay flowers at the foot of the cross in gratitude for the privilege of studying. If we had eyes to see, we would see that all our liberties, all our schools, all our hospitals, all our democracies, all our fellow feeling, all our increasing corporate sense—all these and much more “Jesus began.” The Gospels are the first chapter of the greatest Book ever written.
O Jesus, I thank you that you are beginning in me something that can never, never end. It has the feel of the eternal upon it. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: The beginnings of the Never-Ending are beginning in me.