I started my day like most others, cup tea in hand and opening my bible ready to read and hear God’s voice. It was a bright Good Friday morning and I started on Mark 15. In it was a deep yet quite short account of Jesus trial before Pilate moving on to his crucifixion. But that day God stopped my eyes over one verse in particular. Verse 39 speaks of the Roman officer. I tend to skip over him and look at his words but that day I stopped and looked at him.
My bible talks about this Roman officer who ‘stood facing Jesus.’ I can only imagine the horror this man had seen in his duties. He was a hardened man of war, promoted to lead 100 other soldiers because of his abilities in battle. A tough, hard man, and yet he stopped to ponder this Jesus, who died with inner dignity in the most undignified way possible. Jesus death took six hours, so that would indicate he had watched all this for six hours. At the end of it his declaration was of ‘this man truly was the son of God.’
God challenged me on this. We all have people around us who don’t know Jesus and it’s easy to think of them as too stubborn, hard or tough to know the real Jesus. But they are standing around in your life, watching the workings of Jesus in you. Watching His strength and dignity in you during the undignified situations of life. We will never know whether they are at their sixth hour and ready to accept him, or are still at hour two, but let us never write them off as lost causes. As you go about your day today, go not just to proclaim Jesus death and resurrection, but to live Him out for all those ‘centurions’ in our lives.
