By Luciana Ballesteros-Heras
No one ever forgot that dismal, indelible Friday. Even those who were not present that day can remember it, like a distant, surreal dream, or more fittingly a nightmare. The weather was sultry and there was no wind A boyish face hid in the crowd as a din thronged the teeming praetorium. Young inquisitive Adam had been meandering past when the sounds of riot and chaos had captivated him, and he promptly joined in the pandemonium. Driven by curiosity, he thrust his way to the head of the crowd where his rapt gaze met the eyes of a Man standing erect on the podium, His hands tied behind His back, His bare feet burning on the hot ground, and blood trickling down His face from the front. He had a rather benevolent air–the Man–a loving demeanor, and so much grace that He simply could not have been a criminal, but none of that mattered to the evidently adamant crowd. The audience showered the man in reproachful criticism and heartless beratement as he stood motionless on that podium, accepting His ridicule peacefully and without restraint.
It was Jesus of Nazareth, of Whom Adam had heard many enthralling tales, all instilling in the boy the unquenchable desire to meet this benignant Miracle-worker, a Man who had seemed to have walked out of a dream. Now the Man Who fed five thousand starving people was being mocked by the same number. The Man Who had turned water into wine was sweating blood, and the Man Who made the blind one see was now perceived as a criminal.
“Let him be crucified!” the crowd hollered impassionedly.
“Why? What evil has He done?” asked Pilate, the estimable governor, with a quivering voice, for he had viewed precisely what Adam had seen in Jesus: love, warmth, and the pure innocence of a lamb. But the crowd bellowed even louder than before.
“Crucify him! Crucify Him!” they roared thunderously.
Pilate submitted to defeat, condemned the lamb to death and proclaimed as he washed his hands and departed from the stage “I am innocent of this man’s blood. Look to it yourselves.”
Those words were now ingrained in Adam’s memory.
They escorted Jesus off of the stage and directed him to a large, hefty wooden cross. Jesus carried it compliantly, while His feeble limbs and enervated arms trembled under its unbearable weight. However, simply doing something without complaint will not eradicate its pain. Jesus tripped and tumbled to the ground on three occasions, but He simply picked up the cross and proceeded with His journey to Golgotha where His crucifixion would later take place.
Jesus reached Golgotha in due time. The crowd had been left behind now, but Adam’s heart flooded with queasiness as he lingered behind the soldiers and hid in the bushes, peering through their branches to witness it all: the stripping of His garments, the mounting to the cross, the nails piercing through His hands and the spear slicing through His skin, and the water and blood that poured out of the wound.
“Look to it yourselves. Look to it yourselves,” Adam heard echo in his mind as he watched the life slowly fade from the one Person who made life worth living. An innocent lamb had scarcely been slaughtered before his eyes when a hot tear rolled down his cheek, as the self-triturating burden of guilt weighed heavily on his poor heart.
The pain, dolor, and anguish were palpable in that scene. The boy simply crept stealthily out from where he had been hiding, sobbing and shameful, his face buried in tears, while Jesus’s face was drenched in His own blood.
The sun set and rose twice more, and it was upon this Sabbath day that Adam paid a third and final visit to Jesus, now in His tomb. Change lingered in the air for some peculiar reason that day. Adam felt a strange shift in the atmosphere, and as he sighted the tomb, the inscrutability of the whole affair unfurled. The cumbersome boulder, which had sealed the entrance, had been rolled away. The tomb was wholly empty and fragrant lilies had sprung up all around it, but a little wail resounded from the garden. There sat poor Adam, his face resting on his knees and drowning in tears. Then a hand was laid upon his shoulder. Without turning, he just sobbed and pleaded, “Oh, sir, my Jesus is gone! My Jesus is dead, and His body taken!”
“Your Jesus is not dead, child,” assured the voice comfortingly, but the boy wailed all the more fervidly.
“Yes, He is! I saw Him die—all because of me.”
“No, child, I did not die because of you. I died for you, and I live for you as well—that you may spend an everlasting life with Me. It was all for you.”
And Adam looked up to find himself gazing into his Saviour’s gentle, smiling face enveloped in a cloud of gaiety and bliss. “Christ is risen!” the entire earth seemed to sing in the merry chirping of the birds, in the pleasant humming of the wind, and in the fervent voices of his believers, who shouted “Alleluia! Love is Alive!”
