“As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives …” (Matthew 21 v 1)
On your approach to your destiny you will come through many seasons and experiences.
Through Bethphage whose name means ‘House of unripe figs’ where Jesus caused a fig tree with no fruit to wither. A fig tree has fruit developing before the leaves so if you saw a fig tree with leaves you would be expecting fruit.
On the Mount of Olives where since 3 B.C. it has served as the main burial grounds of the city.
Jesus was always heading to Jerusalem. It is where we celebrate the centre of our faith, his death and resurrection.
Even today you may experience:
- Unfulfilled potential, people who are experiencing a death of their marriage, of their work, of who they could have been and who talked the talk but on a closer scrutiny didn’t live up to that talk. But we are not called to this death. Bethphage is not our destiny.
- The obvious. The fact that everyone and everything has a time-span. Nothing lives forever. Stories come to an end. Happy stories, sad stories, good and kind stories, bad and cruel stories, they all share the same burial ground. But we are not called to such fatalism. The Mount of Olives is not our destiny.
We have to keep going. To Jerusalem.
To the place of the voluntary surrendering of our lives to God for others.
To the place of submission.
This is a new death. A letting go at the point of momentum. We still have life. We may even be at our prime. We still have vision. We have more to give. But it isn’t taken from us and we do not lose it, we give it away, we lay our life down, all that we are, all that we have accomplished, all that we own, we surrender to Him, out of our love for others. This is our destiny, Jerusalem. Where we willingly close the chapter trusting in Him who opens a new one, who makes a way, who never lets death win, who always causes the sun to rise, who continually makes sure we can begin again. This is our destiny.
Missions Paul 