WHEN THINGS DON’T MAKE SENSE 

Alice YoungFrontPage, News, Pastor

Lent Reading: John 12:12-16 

How many times in life have you wondered what God is doing? When have you not understood where God is, how the challenge you are in could be good? When have you asked God, why this is happening? Humans are wired for patterns and to form meaning. We can look at clouds and our minds turn random forms into animal shapes. We take a phone number and find a pattern to remember it by. We love life to make sense and we expect God to make sense. God does make sense, just not always our sense. 

On the day we now call ‘Palm Sunday’, the disciples and crowd celebrated Jesus entering Jerusalem. His teaching, behaviour and miracles made sense to them. It culminated in their praises, “Hosanna!” “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Blessed is the king of Israel!”. The sense the crowd had formed was Jesus was God’s King and finally here was Israel’s rescuer. Yet John concludes this passage with: 

“At first his disciples did not understand all this. Only after Jesus was glorified did they realize that these things had been written about him and that these things had been done to him.” 

John 12:16

This crowd of disciples had the wrong sense of Jesus as King. It was not until after Jesus was resurrected and the Holy Spirit given, the truth of Jesus was rightly revealed. God does make sense, just not our sense. This is not new. God has always been as he says in Isaiah 55:8, “my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways.” God is as the Apostle Paul writes, “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!” 

Next time, when you wonder what God is doing, strengthen your faith with this reminder: this makes sense, just not my sense. 

In Him, 

Jason 

Photo: https://firstbaptistscottcity.org/