Tonight was the Maundy Thursday service at our church. To be honest, I really wasn’t that pumped about going. Wife was gone to work, still needed to drum up something for supper for me and The Kid. Needed to feed the dogs and let the go out. But being an employee of the church…kinda makes you need to be there.
But as I sat and listened to the scriptures from Luke and John being read….the scriptures of the Last Supper and the final night before Jesus was taken to the cross, I was taken back about 18 or 19 years. I think it was on the same night, the night before Good Friday. A church in town was having a little lockin or gathering of some sort for their kids. A friend invited me. I didn’t really know what to expect. I think I was in either 5th or 6th grade. I knew we would probably stay up and goof off and have fun, but I was told there would be a devotional time…whatever that was. My mom said that we’d read some in the Bible about what happened before Jesus was crucified. I was more interested in packing my sleeping bag and some cool stuff to take (lots and lots and LOTS of rubber bands).
But I got all my stuff together early and I had about 30 minutes to kill before my friend Drew’s dad came to pick me up in their truck. So I sat on my couch in our den. I had my stuff and on top was my little Bible that my own church had given me. I was a big reader, but hadn’t really read the Bible much except for trying to find some of the cool stories like David and Goliath or Noah’s Ark. But I figured since I had a little time to kill, I’d brush up a little on what I figured some adult would read to me later that night.
To be honest, it was probably the first time in my life I’d sat down to read something from the Bible. I don’t really remember how I found it, or in what book of the Gospel it was…but it grabbed me. It grabbed me in a really firm grip. I began reading and kept on going. I read about the Passover, of Jesus and His last night, of His disciples and Him giving the bread to someone and telling him to go turn Him in. I read through the beatings and the killing…I read til I heard a horn honk. Then I closed my Bible and gathered my stuff and ran outside.
Later that night I smiled with pride when I could answer all the questions the adult asked about Jesus and his last few hours (I’d just read about it a few hours ago myself….but dang that pride). And I goofed off and lost more sleep than I needed too that night. I used those rubber bands to shoot paper-clips at people too. But the most memorable time of that night was on my couch in my den. That was when I conciously began a journey with Christ, even though I didn’t pray to receive Him as my Savior until a few years later. He did something within me that night on that couch.
If I’m honest I have to say that I don’t read the Bible like I should. I wish it would grab me in a firm grip and never let me go. But I know in my head AND heart that there are many riches held within it if I would just go digging…. I need a childlike faith again. A newness…a freshness. The Sunday School answers come out too easily these days, it seems.
Lord Jesus, give me a passion and a hunger for You and You alone!
