It wasn't a yell. It wasn't a scream. It was a roar… a lion's roar. From what world that roar came the centurion didn't know, but he knew it wasn't this one.
The centurion stood up from the rock and took a few paces toward the Nazarene. As he got closer, he could tell that Jesus was staring into the sky. There was something in His eyes that the soldier had to see. But after only a few steps, he fell. He stood and fell again. The ground was shaking, gently at first and now violently.
He tried once more to walk and was able to take a few steps and then fall… at the foot of the Cross.
He looked up into the face of this one near death. The King looked down at the crusty old centurion. Jesus' hands were fastened; they couldn't reach out. His feet were nailed to timber; they couldn't walk toward him. His head was heavy with pain; He could scarcely move it. But His eyes… they were afire.
They were unquenchable.
- They were the eyes of God.
Perhaps that is what made the centurion say what he said. He saw the eyes of God. He saw the same eyes that had been seen by a near-naked adulteress in Jerusalem, a friendless divorcée in Samaria, and a four-day-dead Lazarus in a cemetery. The same eyes that didn't close upon seeing man's futility, didn't turn away at man's failure, and didn't wince upon witnessing man's death.
"It's all right," God's eyes said. "I've seen the storms and it's still all right."
The centurion's convictions began to flow together like rivers.
"This was no carpenter," he spoke under his breath. "This was no peasant. This was no normal man."
He stood and looked around at the rocks that had fallen and the sky that had blackened. He turned and stared at the soldiers as they stared at Jesus with frozen faces. He turned and watched as the eyes of Jesus lifted and looked toward home. He listened as the parched lips parted and the swollen tongue spoke for the last time.
"Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit." Had the centurion not said it, the soldiers would have. Had the centurion not said it, the rocks would have — as would have the angels, the stars, even the demons. But he did say it. It fell to a nameless foreigner to state what they all knew.
"Surely this Man was the Son of God."
Six hours on one Friday. Six hours that jut up on the plain of human history like Mount Everest in a desert. Six hours that have been deciphered, dissected, and debated for two thousand years.
What do these six hours signify? They claim to be the door in time through which eternity entered man's darkest caverns. They mark the moments that the Navigator descended into the deepest waters to leave anchor points for His followers.
What does that Friday mean?
For the life blackened with failure, that Friday means forgiveness.
For the heart scarred with futility, that Friday means purpose.
And for the soul looking into this side of the tunnel of death, that Friday means deliverance.
Six hours. One Friday.
What do you do with those six hours on that Friday?
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