The Season of Jesus

When Jesus saw him coming he said, “There’s a real Israelite, not a false bone in his body.”
Nathanael said, “Where did you get that idea? You don’t know me.”
Jesus answered, “One day, long before Philip called you here, I saw you under the fig tree.”
Nathanael exclaimed, “Rabbi! You are the Son of God, the King of Israel!”
Jesus said, “You’ve become a believer simply because I say I saw you one day sitting under the fig tree? You haven’t seen anything yet! Before this is over you’re going to see heaven open and God’s angels descending to the Son of Man and ascending again.”

John 1:47-51, The Message

It is the rising crest, the building climax. This is the season of Jesus, his final years on earth, packing eternity into one held breath.

I’ve tried, for many years now, to wrap my mind and arms around Lent, to bear hug what it means to draw closer to Jesus as he draws closer to the cross. This season of remembrance, of following his dusty footsteps to Golgotha, to death, to the excruciating trade for eternal souls.

I lose a bit of myself each time, and gain so much more of Jesus.

Each year I get pulled in deeper. The hitch in my throat grows thicker when I think of Jesus, of his short time on earth and even shorter time drawing in as many as he can as he heads back toward Heaven. The knot in my gut tightens as I think of what it means to follow Jesus up that hill and onto that cross. I try to understand what it means to love so thoroughly it bleeds one dry. On honest days that thought makes me shudder.

I wonder often what it must have been like to be called, touched, seen by Jesus on earth. To be one of the first who saw who he really was, no matter how dimly. To stare astonished as miracle after miracle rolled along behind him, a wake of healing and loving and letting in.

So here we go, another Lenten season, another chance to focus more wholly on Jesus and his journey, to taste his presence and soak up his words. To walk alongside him as he hands out fish and bread and sight and salvation.

To know, even as we dive in head first, that we haven’t seen anything yet.