AND as we approach Good Friday, I see Jesus on the cross, and with a sad face He hears the sounds of the howling mob, braying for His blood. He had heard them earlier in Pilate’s courtyard as they had shouted, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”
Jesus must have looked into the mob and seen the very ones who had attended His sermon on the mount. He must have seen many He had healed, or relatives of those He had given sight to, or had helped walk again, and maybe raise from the dead!
His eyes must have been sad.
But He knew they were not at fault.
He knew they had been instigated by those in power, cunningly and cleverly, and knowing this He cried out to God in Heaven, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do!”
Two thousand years have passed, and today as I look at scenes in my own country, of Christ’s own followers being persecuted, with churches broken, false cases thrust on innocent priests, and laws passed to stop His followers from talking about Christ, I feel like crying out the same words, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do!” Yes, these are the same ones who went to the best school started by Christian missionaries. Yes, many of them were treated in the best hospitals quite often at no cost. Yes, many of them poor and poverty stricken were fed and clothed, but now they are part of the mob!
And I hear a Christ above, still turning to His Father and saying, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing!” So, who is it who knows what is being done? And I go back in time to the high priests and pharisees, who plotted to kill Jesus, and who cunningly used the mob, and here two thousand years later, it is the same; many who sit in authority, who instigate and misinform the millions of illiterate and uneducated in our country.
They know how easy it is to feed people with untruths of ‘forced conversion’ and that foreign powers are trying to grab our country through their foreign God, and the poor and uneducated believe and become their army to destroy, demolish, and desecrate. Even as the mob is not to blame, a God above looks down, and sees those behind that mob! My column for this week was another, a political satire, till I felt this overpowering feeling this morning, making me pen this piece, one in which I humbly warn those that instigate the mob, that a God above sees the suffering, notices the destruction, watches the false cases, hears the cries for help, and knows, oh yes, He Knows What You Do, even as He stretches out His hands like that Good Friday long ago embracing all who suffer for Him..!
