Lent Devotional 18

When I reread the Matthew sequence for the Wednesday and Thursday sequence of Holy week something jumped out at me. Jesus is anointed with very expensive oil, the disciples prepare for the Passover, they eat their Last Meal together, and then Jesus goes to the Garden of Gethsemane. What struck me was that each of these events included a time of preparation for what will come on Friday.

When Jesus is anointed by the woman in the house of Simon the Leper the disciples were indignant over the waste. I typically hate extravagance. The camp superintendent at the Leesburg Camp secretly placed a bumper sticker on the old ’87 Isuzu Diesel Pup that I drove which said “Why Buy New…  When Used Will Do”. He had gotten the sticker from the Lady Lake Salvage Yard.

I bought that truck from a construction company in Ft. Myers. It had 30,000 miles on the odometer and 400 lbs. of dirt in the cab. Three years later it retired with 175,000 miles on the odometer and became an in-camp work truck. It began that phase of life with a “new” junk yard vinyl interior and was clean as a whistle. I would not have stopped driving it except I knew that it was no longer reliable on long trips.

My boss Bob Bledsoe insisted that I replace it with a new truck. It was a Chevy S-10. It had a cloth interior, was very comfortable to ride in, and smelled strangely new. I treated that truck differently. I knew that spills and camp mud would stain it, so I was careful about taking off my muddy shoes when I got in. When it got dirty I knew that it had to be cleaned with carpet cleaner and not a garden hose. I sold the Chevy S-10 three years later, it was an easy sell. It had a lot of miles, but was still immaculate.

Both of those trucks had great value to me. The Pup because I had essentially rebuilt it from a dirty work truck with many miles still to be driven to a clean comfortable work truck that was best suited to stay close to home. It was my truck because of what I had done to it. The S-10 is a truck that I best remember not for what I did to it, but for what it did for me. It was comfortable. It had jump seats in the back that my son and his friends loved to ride in. One was powered by a loud and leaky diesel motor and the other by a quiet and powerful V-6. One truck had little real value when I got it and the other was very valuable from day one. Both got me to where needed to be.

In Matthew 26: 19 Jesus says, “Don’t trouble this woman because she has done a beautiful thing for me.” He understood that value is not just cost, but includes human sacrifice.

As you prepare for the Good Fridays in your life examine the “valuable” things that have been given to you and think about what they prepared you for.

Have a wonderful Holy Thursday and

SHALOM,

Tom Mc