Impact

Sometimes we need to take action to make a point.

As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, "If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. Indeed, the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another; because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God." Then he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling things there; and he said, "It is written, 'My house shall be a house of prayer' but you have made it a den of robbers." Every day he was teaching in the temple. The chief priests, the scribes, and the leaders of the people kept looking for a way to kill him; but they did not find anything they could do, for all the people were spellbound by what they heard. - Luke 19:41-48

There aren't too many stories in the Gospels where Jesus gets angry, but this may be one.

Though the way Luke sets up the cleansing of the Temple, with Jesus almost weeping at the fate of Jerusalem, one could argue that he wasn't angry as much as he was desperate.

He may have wanted to save the city he loved, and this was only a small action toward that goal.

His time with us was coming to an end and he knew it.  

There was little more he could do to convince the people to change their ways, and the leadership was totally against him.  They were determined to silence him and make his ministry go away.

He was a disrupter to them and their quest for power, so he must be stopped.  But was Jesus really trying to change the way of the world in three years?  Or was he just looking for a few lost sheep?

In hindsight, his impact was huge, while at the time, it didn't appear so.

So, the lesson for us may be to focus on what we can accomplish and do that, even if we think it will have no impact, because eventually, it could change everything.

More to come...