In all our busy-ness and occupation with our new role, I feel each day, each week is whizzing by.  I don't have time to ponder what I am going to do - I am mostly preparing for a trip or doing what just comes next in our schedule.
And although we had been in our own church for the beginning of "Lent", I feel disconnected and disjointed from what I thought would be a focus for me this year.  I have not really observed the lenten season with readings or weekly meditations such as we have for Advent.  So I made the effort to subscribe to an e-mail lenten daily devotional and thought I would take part in that...
But my ability to concentrate for any extended  quiet time has been hampered with out travels.  The readings were too long, the points too elaborate.  But in the daily devotional book I read at night, the focus had been on the events leading up to Jesus' crucifixion.  The Scriptures have been short and sweet.  The meditations just three or four paragraphs long.  The prayer suggestion and additional Scriptures simple and straightforward.
So the one written for April  11 - I know, I was jumping ahead - was about "The Unjust Conspiracy".  Matthew 26:59 says "The chief priests and the whole Council kept trying to obtain false testimony against Jesus, in order that they might put Him to death."  The extreme lawkeepers could not even find a law that Jesus had transgressed, so they themselves broke their beloved law to find a way to kill this radical religious competitor!
This struck me in a forceful way.  My Saviour endured false accusations, submitted to evil authorities and accepted the lies.  His purpose could not be wavered as He set His heart for the Cross.  Jesus Christ was completely innocent and only contrived and manipulated charges could be presented in the plot to kill Him. No one could find grounds to accuse Him because He did live a sinless, perfectly righteous life.
The reality of this makes me angry and sad.  Just as I get all emotionally charged up, I am stopped in my tracks.  "Forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing!"  Hanging. nailed to the wooden cross, Jesus not only submits to the torture and refuses to defend Himself, but He has the grace to ask the Father to forgive them!
My own failures become enlarged as I think of all the arguments and defensive tactics I would employ in the face of much lesser accusations and abuses.  I am stunned by Jesus' mercy; I am ashamed by my own weak self-protectiveness.
Lent is being made aware that Jesus did what I cannot do-He is the Lamb without blemish.