The fountain of grace…

Ancient Jerusalem really was a dry and dusty place, both in the natural and in the spiritual.  It was the kind of place that even if you did wash well it didn’t take too long to be dirty again.  This happened in the natural and in the spiritual, because in the spiritual they relied on a sacrifice system that required constantly returning to be cleansed again.  Get yourself clean, next thing you know you’re dirty again, so back for another sacrifice.

Our Bible says, “On that day a fountain will be opened to the house of David and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and impurity.” (Zechariah 13:1)

The ‘day’ would come when every person could be cleansed.  Every person.  A fountain for kings and paupers, for presidents and junkies, for executives and the unemployed, for the rich and the poor, for the well fed and the starving, for the fortunate and the downtrodden, for the winners and the losers, for the healthy and the afflicted.  But the fountain Zechariah referred to flowed not with water, but with the grace of God.

On Friday we hung Him on the cross.  Our rejection drove in the nails.  On Friday His body was broken, because we thought we could live without Him.  On Friday His blood poured out and flowed down His body dripping to the ground, because we didn’t believe He loved us.  On Friday He was entombed in the ground, given over to death.

Then that day came.  The Bible tells us the angels who moved the stone were bright and shining like lightning. They were brilliantly white.  I can imagine as they moved the stone the first crack of even more brilliant light appeared.  An amazingly bright light squeezing through, just like in a Spielberg movie.  Then as the stone moved further the crack of light became a flood.  A flood of light.  A flood of grace.  The stone was moved.  The fountain was opened.