Appeasing the Crowd

This is Day 36 of my 40 day Lenten Blog.

It's Holy Week, the week leading up to Christ's Passion and subsequent Resurrection. I will be writing about each of the Sorrowful Mysteries each day this week. The Second Sorrowful Mystery is the Scourging at the Pillar.

Jesus was taken to Pilate the Roman governor in Jerusalem because the Jewish leaders wanted Him crucified. But Pilate did not want to kill Him because He believed Jesus was innocent. Yet seeing that the crowd had been whipped up against Jesus, and fearing a riot, Pilate had Him scourged anyway.

The scourging was horrible. Roman soldiers beat Him with a cat o-nine tails, nine leather thongs with metal and sharp bones on the ends, which cut the skin every time He was whipped. Christ's entire body was beaten with this whip.

Pilate did that to Jesus despite knowing that Jesus was innocent. He did it to appease the crowd. As horrible as that sounds I must admit that I do it too. Whenever I turn to the world and away from Christ I beat Him to appease the crowd. Whenever I let my values slip to the level of the world's distorted values I beat Him to appease the crowd. And it is my sins that cover His precious skin with stripes of blood.

R.C. VanLandingham is the author of the Peter Puckett series, a Christian children's fantasy that explores what it means to know and love Christ through exciting adventures. His books and blog can be found at rcvanlandingham.com.