Day 1
The wonderful grace of Jesus reaches me
When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified Him there, along with the criminals—one on His right, the other on His left. Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:33-34).
"How do you think you did?" My mother greeted me anxiously as I came into the waiting area.
I was writing the Common Entrance Exams, now called Caribbean Primary Exit Assessment (CPEA), and the pressure to succeed was enormous. The exam determines the secondary school a student gets into, and steers the entire post-primary education experience. In many ways it is comparable to the college entrance exam process in the United States, except of course, it occurs at secondary level.
In the Caribbean as in many other regions of the world, education is seen as the beginning of the road to lifelong success—and for many, the way out of poverty. The pressure, the competition and the great regard—almost reverence—for scholarship are deeply embedded in social and cultural frames.
So here we were, an anxious throng of students from all over the island, ranging in age from 10.5 to 13.5, staking our only known future on successful recall of the English, Maths, (Brit-short for Mathematics) and Intelligence (logic and reasoning skills) prep that we had sweated, and fretted, and cried over for what seemed like forever.
And here I was, in panic mode, tearfully explaining to my mother the "terrible mistake" I had made on my English test. Under all the pressure, I had "ized" my verbs instead of "ising" them.
As a British colony, we followed British spelling conventions, so verbs that in American spelling end in "ize, " were for us, "ise." For example, we used realise, not realize; organise, not organize.
I quickly real-ised/ized why my brain had become so addled. Over the last year or so before my Common Entrance Exams, cousins who lived in Canada had returned to St. Vincent for a short time, and had introduced my sister and me to Nancy Drew. Being avid readers, we devoured every Nancy Drew mystery we could get our hands on. Not long after, we "expanded into" The Hardy Boys.
Until the Common Entrance exams, I was not conscious of the spelling conflict brewing in my brain from its steady diet of American mysteries. Fortunately for me, the damage in my moment of truth appears to have been minimal, and I had good exam results.
Years later I was to better understand that under pressure, we say and do the things we have internalised/internalized. (I'm having too much fun with this!)"Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks," Jesus told His religious critics (Matthew 12:34). The NIV translation puts it this way, "The mouth speaks—or in the case of my feverish 11-year old brain, writes— what the heart is full of."
In light of that truth, I marvel all the more at what came out of Jesus' mouth as He was being tortured on a Roman Cross. The gospel writers fill in many of the terrible details. We learn from Mark:
Wanting to satisfy the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas to them. He had Jesus flogged, and handed Him over to be crucified. The soldiers… put a purple robe on Him, then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on Him. And they began to call out to Him, “Hail, king of the Jews!” Again and again they struck Him on the head with a staff and spit on Him. Falling on their knees, they paid homage to Him. And when they had mocked Him, they took off the purple robe and put His own clothes on Him. Then they led him out to crucify Him (Mark 15:15-20).
And then, hanging in agony in the middle of two thieves, He utters the words recorded by Luke, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).
Father, forgive them. My abusers. My torturers. The ones who then, and now, embrace Barabbas (Mark 15:6-15) and reject the One who came to free them from murder and mayhem. Forgive their rebellion. Forgive their ignorance.
Amazing words. Out of the abundance of His heart. A heart of boundless mercy. A heart of measureless grace. A heart of infinite love.
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