Holy Monday: Restoring What was Lost

Devotion

Jesus Clears the Temple Courts
When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

The Jews then responded to him, “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?”
Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”

They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?”  But the temple he had spoken of was his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.

Artwork

"Sodom and Gomorrah Afire" by Jacob de Wet II

The painting was chosen to show how Christ was now destroying this worldly place just as he had Sodom and Gomorrah as its mere presence was a disgrace to God. 

Poetry

"Restore and Rebuild" by Tirupathi Chandrupatla

Sound, sound
It’s noise everywhere
Where can we find
The calm that we lost?
Terror, terror
It’s chaos everywhere
How can we find
The peace that we lost?
Strong’re the winds
It’s storms everywhere
What do we do to get back
The gentle breeze lost?
Water’s rushing in
It’s floods everywhere
Let’s repair the dam
And restore the reservoir.
There’s much to do
We’ve no time to lose
To restore, rebuild
And revive what we lost.
       
The poem ties it together with how rather than just destroying in righteous anger, Christ is also restoring and rebuilding his temple not just physically but spiritually as well through his grace which would come on the cross.