Whether it’s a computer password, a bit of information confidentially revealed over dinner or a five year-plan at a closed-door meeting, leaders and common folk alike leave themselves open to betrayal in any number of ways.
When I was running a large business concern, I was asked by consultants and confidants, “What keeps you up at night?”
The number one thing that would come to mind was that of betrayal. Our hearing health care practice had its ups and downs. Having to use a severe line of credit or wondering whether we’d survive the latest economic crisis was nothing compared to the idea of someone knifing me in the back.
Within time, I didn’t have to worry about the concept of losing sleep over betrayal. Its reality visited me personally and professionally.
It makes one wonder what God is thinking. Why does His path often spin on an exacting betrayal?
Well, at least I was in good company. Joseph-the-technicolored-coated wonder boy was betrayed by his brothers while King David got shafted by his own son. And Jesus…Oh, I have felt that kiss. Perhaps you have, too?
Passion Week’s key element is one of betrayal. It moves the plot to its conclusion.
There was a rock in a garden with sweat mixed with blood that fell from a man who was being kept up at night. Ironically, another was staying up extra late that evening while eleven others weren’t losing any sleep.
PORTAL TO HEAVEN: Betrayal is something felt deeply by one person. Even if others are around to attempt to console, the knife has just one back for its destination. The portal to heaven is that its deepest cut goes straight into gutless stomach of Satan and right through his spineless back when the betrayed doesn’t lose his love.
‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.’…And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross…For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Luke 23:34 NIV, Colossians 2:15 NIV, Isaiah 55:8,9 ESV