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Seven Final Sayings of Jesus: #2 'Grace'
[Makeover]
04/12/2010
By Admin, Admin
Jesus replied, “I promise that today you will be with me in paradise.”
Talk about a death-bed conversion! For this thief, life has come into focus. Deep inside, he finally understands.
He doesn’t join the soldiers in humiliating the broken God on the cross next door. After a life spent trying to be noticed, to be somebody, he knows he is about to be nobody, to be forgotten for good. A dead fly, swatted onto the floor of history.
Talk about a death-bed conversion! For this thief, life has come into focus. Deep inside, he finally understands.
He doesn’t join the soldiers in humiliating the broken God on the cross next door. After a life spent trying to be noticed, to be somebody, he knows he is about to be nobody, to be forgotten for good. A dead fly, swatted onto the floor of history.
Yet some mysterious instinct tells him that maybe if this one on the next cross will notice him, will remember him… he will never be forgotten again. How did he know that Jesus’ weakness and vulnerability were invisibly tied to strength, to another kind of power?
You will be with me today, in a place of unimaginable beauty and peace, a place we sometimes called paradise. “You will be with me today,” says Jesus Christ, not some vague “when” in the future but, today, as if there was no doubt about it, as if we can take him at his word. The Kingdom is here and now. God’s greatness exceeded the thief’s very modest expectations—and we can see this as a simple statement of what Christ can and will do here and now if we put our trust in him, opening our lives to his presence and power.
When Jesus Christ remembers us, we can never be forgotten again.
Pastor Jeannette Conver
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