This Monday does not feel holy.
It started out feeling holier than my previous few Mondays, but then I quickly remembered that I forgot a timely work task and yelled a curse word at my empty apartment.
Yet, here we are. Monday of Holy Week. Holy Monday. The day where Jesus entered the temple and turned over the table of the money changers and called them out for turning a house of prayer into a den of thieves.
He was v upset.
I remember a song that I used to listen to on my non-skip cd player that had a deep voice declare at the end of one of the very Christian songs, “My Father’s house shall be called a house of prayer.”
The version of the Bible I read today doesn’t say it quite like that, but still…
I got to thinking about another time Jesus was in the temple, but a lil less upset. He was 12 and he traveled with his parents to Jerusalem for Passover, as ya do. Jesus, being the perfect pre-teen that he was, stayed behind when his parents were done with the festival. They realize they’re missing the Messiah, so they turn around and go back to get him. His response?
“Didn’t you know that it was necessary for me to be in my Father’s house?” (Luke 2:49 [CSB])
Even then, He was telling us who He was – Son of God, Son of Man.
I doubt the instance we read about in the later chapters of Matthew, Mark, and Luke was the second/only other time Jesus visited the temple. I’m sure he went many times, as was the custom for Jewish people. Yet the people still didn’t get it.
Don’t you know it’s necessary for me to be in my Father’s house?
Don’t you know this is a house of prayer, not profit?
Do you have any idea what is about to happen to this temple?
Do you know that I am the One you all have been waiting for?
Luke tells us in chapter 19 that as Jesus approached the city of Jerusalem before His final Passover, he wept for her, because she “did not recognize the time when God visited you.” (19:44).
Do we know that God has visited us?
Do we know that redemption is available?
Do we know that He is the One who has healed the broken hearted and bound up their wounds?
May we recognize the time when God has visited us, and may we take a tight hold on the Savior who weeps over us and longs to bring us peace.
Kayla Smith 