Jesus’ life was quite the rollercoaster. First, He was just a baby born in a stable. Then, the king wanted to kill Him, and His family had to move to Egypt for a time. As time went on, he was just a carpentor’s son, until He got baptized and the Spirit of God descended on Him like a dove. Later, he performed miracles, grew a following, and clashed with the Pharisees, the religious leaders of the time. Then, He was arrested, put on trial, and crucified. Three days later, He rose again.
From a human perspective, Jesus’s life was full of unexpected change that sometimes didn’t make sense. For example, in John 12, Jesus triumphantly rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, fulfilling Zechariah’s prophecy about Him. The crowds cheered Him on, waving palm branches and spreading out their cloaks on the road for Him. Many had heard of Jesus raising Lazarus, and they believed in Him and flocked around Him. Out-of-town Greeks, who came to Jerusalem for the Passover, likewise desired to see Jesus. The Pharisees were taken aback, saying to each other, “You see that you are accomplishing nothing. Look, the world has gone after Him!” (John 12:19). God also spoke audibly to Jesus and the people.
This was a huge point in Jesus’ ministry! He fulfilled prophecy, His following grew, the Pharisees were taken down a peg, and God spoke to His people. Yet, the next chapter (John 13) is the Last Supper.
At the height of Jesus’s ministry, He prepared to die. Something I found interesting was that during Jesus’ life, a common theme is that the people repeatedly tried to seize Jesus, yet “His hour had not yet come” (John 7:30 and 8:20), so they couldn’t do anything. But at one of the highest points of Jesus’s ministry, he said “The hour has come, that the Son of man should be glorified.” (John 12:23)
There’s a lot of things we can take away from these chapters, but the thing that stood out for me was that God rarely works in ways we expect. I doubt anyone, including Jesus’ disciples, expected Him to die after His triumphant entry.
I think for us, we can get to a really good place in life when God, out of the blue, tells us to change it up or do something different. It’ll feel weird and and might be scary, but we can trust that with God, nothing is unexpected. Jesus’ death might have seemed very sudden, but it was the means of providing salvation for us. When God pokes us out of our comfort zone, He’ll have something good in store for us.