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Day Thirty-Five
Day Thirty–Five // March 29 // The Broken Heart of Christ
“‘Tis said of love that it sometimes goes, sometimes flies; runs with one, walks gravely with another; turns a third into ice, and sets a fourth in a flame: it wounds one, another it kills: like lightning it begins and ends in the same moment: it makes that fort yield at night which it besieged but in the morning; for there is no force able to resist it.” – Miguel de Cervantes –
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Three times. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus cries three times. Once by the tomb of His friend. Once in the garden of His betrayal. And once over the city of His death. “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace – but now it is hidden from your eyes,” He’d cried (Luke 19:42). His heart – fashioned by the very hands of God and birthed from the womb of woman – was breaking. It was breaking for the sins of the world. It was breaking for the coldness and the hardness and the seeming indifference He saw.
106 PERFECTLY WOUNDED
What Jerusalem could not manufacture. What Rome could not enforce. What Athens could not conceive. Peace. Peace of heart and mind and soul. And it broke His heart – all our waywardness and wantonness, all our stubborn willfulness. That we would choose anything over peace, that we would choose anything over Him: it was heartbreaking.
And He had tried. He’d tried to tell us. He’d tried to show us. He’d tried to woo and cajole and compel our believing, but it was hidden from our eyes. Instead, we mounted Him on a colt and led Him through the streets – waving palms to the King we’d soon crown with thorns. “Hallelujah!” we’d shouted. “Lord, save!” we’d roared.
But save us from what? We did not know.
Save us from Caesar? Save us from Rome?
No, save us from ourselves. Save us from sin and evil and death. Save us from all the powers of darkness that hold us in dread sway.
And our ignorance broke His heart. But, still, He came. Perfectly aware of all that would soon take place, He came – undaunted, undeterred, undelayed. He came for you and for me. The fault lines of His soul emblazoned with our names, He came to show us what only holy and broken hearts can do: to deny oneself, to pick up a cross, and to follow onwards (Luke 9:23).
