Jesus...Yesterday, Today, Forever

"Now!"
It's not judgment—it's joy!
A Great Light has dawned
God in the flesh
Blindness
They missed it
For the JOY set before Him
Choices...
He loves me!
 

This was God in the flesh!

How do you describe One who is utterly indescribable?  I picture Him on the Mount of Olives as day breaks, exploding in wonder and dancing in praise to His Father at the grandeur of His own sun rising across the Judean horizon, celebrating the magnificence that He alone is aware of.  Folklore and formality have done a good job of painting Jesus slight and solemn, distant and detached, or reducing Him to a long-faced, stained-glass image.  But this was God in the flesh!  This was all the bigness and power, the goodness and glory, the might and the majesty of the universe and then some, somehow incredibly wrapped up in the confines of a human body.  

His were hands that had flung the stars into the sky, lips that had kissed the moon into being.  It would not have been a soft hand, you know.  It would have been an experienced, calloused, thick-with muscle hand.  It would have been a hand that radiated strength, protection, bigness, tenderness.  It would have been a hand whose every touch was pure and giving, a hand that lifted, a hand that covered, a hand that cherished, a hand you just knew you could trust—and that whispered with its every touch, "I love you."

And now, here He is, living earthly life in earthly time.  Walking among and living with the throngs of His most treasured, most valued, most beloved creation: people.  Laughing with them, eating with them, working with them, crying over them.  He alone knows the priority that they are—such priority that the Son of the Living God gladly leaps from heavenly perfection and dives head-long into hellish destruction to save even one of them from the same fate.  He presses in with tireless fervor, marching forward with the confident stride of a man who knows what His life is all about, never once indulging a disappointment, never once wasting an opportunity, never once holding a regret or complaint or looking back.

Text and photos taken from Jesus...Yesterday, Today, Forever, by Bruce Marchiano (p. 38-42).  In Jesus...YTF, you'll taste what only a handful of people tasted 2,000 years ago as Jesus walked among His most treasured, beloved creation:  people.  Filled with breathtaking color photos from The Visual Bible™'s "Matthew."

Jesus...Yesterday, Today, Forever.  Copyright © 1999 by Bruce Marchiano. Published by Harvest House Publishers, Eugene, Oregon  97402 and Visual Entertainment, Dallas, Texas  75248.  Used on www.LoveLavished.org  by permission.