Servants First

After the Mount of Transfiguration experience, Jesus started His final journey to Jerusalem and the cross which was beginning to loom large before Him.  As we read gospel accounts of that movement from the mountain of transcendent glory to the hill of crucifixion, we know that Jesus began to speak to His disciples of the reality and the necessity of His impending sacrifice.  They never seemed to get it.  Maybe it was too horrible a possibility for them to consider.  Or, maybe their pre-occupation with themselves and their positions of greatness kept them from seeing the self-sacrificing servant who was walking ahead of them on the road to Jerusalem. 

 

What we know is our own aversion to following the Suffering Servant if it means sharing too much of the suffering with Him.  In our mind hard times cannot possibly be a part of God's plan for us.  Life is supposed to be good for the disciple of Jesus and when we begin to experience the difficult moments of life, our first inclination is to pray for deliverance instead of seeking His purpose in allowing us to live in such a hard place.  In our Christian life, we are too quick to go after our own plans which in the end always make our life easier and better by the standards of the secular community instead of going after God's plan which might put us in a place of sacrificing any right to self or even our own life.

 

The important question in life is not "What must I do with my life?" but "What does God want to do with my life?"  Had Jesus not been into seeking the answer to the second, He surely would have found a route that would detour around Calvary. The disciples were into the first as they walked with Jesus to the cross while arguing over personal greatness.  Like many of us, they failed to get it that following Jesus was about being a servant of the Father's will.