Their lives were set.
They had worked at their jobs all their lives.
They thought they knew which way life would turn for the rest of their days.
There was a hope for Messiah, in their minds a political savior, to free them from the Romans. But mostly there was routine, the everydayness of work and home.
Then they met Him. Perhaps He was the one. the one who would save them from the oppression of Rome. That was their plan.
They were fishermen and a tax collector, the tax collector recruited to stop working for Rome, to find a higher cause. Surely overcoming the earthly oppression of Rome was the plan.
The disciples listened. They followed. They believed.
They still thought political freedom was the plan.
Then one betrayed Him. Another denied Him. One stayed close to the end. The rest scattered. They watched their plan end.
They watched their plan die.
The fishermen returned to their boats, back to the routine, back to the everydayness of every day.
Life would be as it had been, as if He’d never lived.
Then He arose. Rome stayed, but His followers changed.
They received fire from heaven.
They were never the same.
That was His plan.
They turned the world upside down.
His plan.
His rising, a lie?
You may say so, but who dies for a lie?
Only one disciple would not be killed for believing Him who said, “Follow Me.”
That one would suffer exile and write his encounters with Him whom he’d followed at the cost of all else–all else but eternal gain.
All else but God’s plan.
This plan remains today.
To show us how to follow Him.
To make us never the same.
His way through His plan.