Lent Devotional

[Bestill]

Passing along what someone passed to me.

I did not begin as something cruel.

I grew quietly out of the ground, just another thorn bush doing what thorn bushes do. Reaching, spreading, catching on anything that came too close. No purpose beyond survival. No meaning beyond existence. If you had asked the ground why I was there, it would have told you what it has said since the beginning…thorns and thistles, part of the curse, part of what came after everything went wrong. I was not a symbol then. I was just a consequence.

I had heard the stories, in the way creation does. Not with words, but with memory. Of a garden that once grew without resistance. Of ground that gave freely instead of fighting back. Of a world where nothing sharp had to exist to defend itself. And then the moment everything changed, when the curse settled in and the earth itself began to push back. “Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you.” That was my beginning. Not chosen. Not celebrated. Just…what grew when things broke.

I was never meant to be gentle.

So when they came and cut me down, twisted me together, forced me into a shape I had never held before, it did not feel like a purpose. It felt like more of the same. More misuse. More of the broken world doing what broken things do. They pressed me into a crown, which I knew was not what I was made for. I was not gold. I was not honor. I was not something to be placed on a king.

I was part of the curse. And then they put me on His head. I expected resistance.

That is what I do. I pierce. I press. I wound. That is my nature. That is what the curse made me into. And yet the moment I touched Him, something felt…different. Not because I became softer. I didn’t. I still did exactly what I was made to do. I cut into skin. I drew blood. I pressed where I should not have been.

But He did not pull away.

Every other living thing resists me. They flinch, they recoil, they fight the sharpness of what I am. It is instinct. It is survival. But He didn’t. He received me, fully, without pushing back, without removing what had no right to be there.

And I realized, slowly, in a way I cannot fully explain, that I was no longer just part of the curse. I was resting on the One who had spoken the ground into existence before it ever produced me. The same ground that was cursed to grow me…was made by Him. The same words that declared thorns would come forth…were spoken into a world He had formed.

And now here I was, pressed into His skin, doing exactly what the curse had designed me to do…to the One who had never been part of that curse.

They mocked Him with me. Called Him king while placing something broken and painful where something glorious should have been. They meant it as humiliation. A joke. A final insult in a long line of them.

But they did not understand what they were doing. Because I was never just a mockery. I was evidence.

Evidence that the curse had reached its full weight, that everything that had gone wrong since the beginning had found its way to this moment. The ground had produced me as a sign of what was broken, and now I was pressed into the very One who had come to undo it.

I was not replacing a crown. I was revealing the cost of one. And when the blood ran down around me, I understood something I had never understood before.

I was not being used to mock a king. I was being used in the making of one.

Not the kind of king the world recognizes, with gold and power and comfort, but the kind that takes what is cursed and does not push it away. The kind that allows the full weight of what is broken to press in…and does not stop it.

I was part of the curse. Until I touched Him.

And now, I am part of the story of what the curse cost and what it took to undo it.

Because the ground once grew me as a sign that everything had fallen apart. And now I have been placed on the One who came to put it back together.

[Bestill]

I have been doing this longer than you can even wrap your brain around. Before barns and bottle calves and before Rome decided crosses were a nice dramatic way to make a point, I was already there, steady and dependable in the worst possible way. Kings, shepherds, loud ones, quiet ones, the ones who fought it and the ones who slipped away without much of a fuss…they all came through me eventually. I don’t rush. I don’t miss. I don’t lose. That’s just how it has always worked, and I have never had a reason to think it would work any differently that day.

So when they dragged Him up that hill, I wasn’t impressed. I’ve seen crucifixions. Rome didn’t invent anything new there, they just perfected how slow and miserable they could make it. I figured this would go like all the others. Another body worn down, another breath getting shallow, another moment where everything leans my direction and I close in like I always do. Predictable. Reliable. Honestly, if I had shoulders, I probably would have shrugged.

The sky started acting strange, and I will admit that got my attention just a little. Darkness in the middle of the day isn’t exactly standard procedure. The ground shifting under everything, rocks splitting…it was louder than usual, more restless. But I’ve watched humans panic over less. They see one odd thing and assume the whole world is ending. I knew better. The world wasn’t ending. It was doing what it always does. It was handing me another life.

And then He started speaking, and that’s when something didn’t sit right. I am very familiar with the sound of dying. There’s a pattern to it. There’s a tone. Even the strong ones, even the stubborn ones, they all eventually sound the same when they realize what’s coming. But He didn’t. There was no scrambling, no bargaining, no panic wrapped in bravery. Even hanging there, He sounded…steady. Not like someone losing. More like someone finishing something.

I told myself it didn’t matter. I have seen confident people before. I have seen people face me with courage, with denial, with peace, with anger. It never changes the outcome. It never has. So I waited like I always do, patient, certain, letting the moment come to me.

I felt it, that familiar shift, that moment right before the last breath where everything tilts and I step in. That is my moment. That is where I have always won, without exception, without hesitation. Every story ends the same way, and I am the one who closes it.

And then He said, “It is finished.”

Not “I am finished,” which would have made sense. Not the usual fading out, not the unraveling I am used to hearing. Finished, like something had been completed, wrapped up, decided. I should have recognized that for what it was, but I didn’t. Why would I? I had never had to question an ending before.

So I reached for Him.

And instead of taking Him, it felt like He stepped forward. Not pulled. Not taken. Not slipping through my hands like the others. He stepped into me on purpose, like someone walking into a room they built. And in that moment, everything I had always known how to do…stopped working.

I wasn’t holding Him. He was holding me.

You have to understand, I have never had that happen. Not once. I have never lost my grip. I have never had something enter me and not belong to me. And yet there He was, not contained, not defeated, not ending. It was like trying to hold onto something that didn’t recognize my authority at all.

The ground split wider, the veil tore, and something deeper than anything I had ever felt before cracked straight through me. Not resistance. Not a fight I could win if I just leaned harder. Something final. Something irreversible. For the first time since the beginning, I felt what I have caused in everything else.

Loss.

I had spent all of history collecting people like they were mine to keep, like every story naturally bent toward me, like I was the final word on every life that had ever been lived. And there He was, quietly, completely, rewriting that while I was still standing there thinking I was in control.

And then three days later, when that stone moved, it wasn’t subtle. It wasn’t quiet. It wasn’t something I could pretend didn’t happen. He didn’t slip out. He walked out. Alive. Whole. Untouched by everything I had built my existence on.

That’s when I understood it.

I hadn’t just lost one.

I had lost my claim to all of them.

Every person I thought ended with me, every life I thought I owned the final chapter of, every moment I had ever stepped in thinking I was the conclusion… it was all temporary. I wasn’t the end anymore. I was just a moment people pass through on their way somewhere else.

I still come. That hasn’t changed. You still see me, still feel me, still fear me more than you probably should. But I am not what I used to be, and deep down, whether you admit it or not, you know that.

Because the One I thought I defeated didn’t just walk away from me.

He broke me.

And here’s the part you keep forgetting while you go about your day like nothing has changed. You still live like I have the final say. You still act like I’m the thing that decides how your story ends, like I’m the thing to fear most, like I’m still sitting in the place I used to sit.

I’m not.

If I didn’t even realize I had already lost until it was too late, what makes you think I still have any claim over you now?

You don’t belong to me.

You belong to the One who walked straight through me and didn’t stay.