Questions

Life is filled with questions. Many of these questions are simple, with no real significant long-term impacts in our lives. Questions like, "What will I eat for breakfast?" or "What color socks will I wear? (This is simplified even more for me because I only have blue, black or brown!) Some of life's questions are complex and have long-term, even eternal impacts in our lives. These questions include such things as "Who will I marry?" or "What career choice will I make?" However, there is one question that was asked almost 2,000 years ago that continues to be the most significant question ever asked.



As Christians all over the world begin to focus their hearts and minds on the upcoming Easter season, I have begun to read all four Gospel accounts of the last week of Jesus' earthly life. This week I read from Matthew and I came across the question that always stops me in my tracks. In Matthew 27, we read the account of Jesus' trial before Pilate. After Pilate has agreed to release the criminal, Barabbas, he turns to the crowd and asks, "What would you have me do then with this Jesus the Christ?" I suggest that a more profound question has never been asked, in all of history past or will ever be asked in the future..."What would you have me do with this Jesus?" There is not a person who has ever lived, or is living now, or will ever live that is not faced with this question. The life, burial and resurrection of Jesus is the hinge point of all history. Every event in time either points forward to the cross or back to the cross! The life of Jesus demands a response.

As we prepare to celebrate His resurrection, I pray that the response you will have to the question, "What would you have me do with this Jesus?", will be the same response the apostle Thomas had...to bow in adoration and thanksgiving and cry out, "My Lord and my God!" There is no other answer to the question.