The Cloaks Off Their Backs

The Cloaks Off Their Backs

The Cloaks Off Their Backs

Daily Devotion for Lent | Friday, March 2, 2018

Read Mark 11:1-10.

And many spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut from the fields. (Mark 11:8)

“The red carpet treatment.” That’s how modern Western cultures describe a royal welcome. The crowd welcoming Jesus had similar ideas. Joyfully Jesus’ disciples threw their cloaks over the donkey’s back, doing the best they could in place of a saddle. The crowd grabbed their own cloaks and spread them on the road, making a royal carpet for Jesus to ride over. It may have been poor and improvised, but it was also full of joy and love.

Cloaks off their backs? I can’t help wondering what the women said when their husbands and children came home with extra laundry to do. No, actually, I can imagine it, every word—but what was their defense? “It was for Jesus,” they must have said. “I’m sorry about the extra work and all the dirt. But it was for Jesus, you have to understand.”

The women who had been there would already understand. Those who had met Him before—who had heard Him preach, had been healed and comforted by Him, had been challenged and forgiven and blessed—they too would understand. Nothing is too good for Jesus. Not our cloaks, not our hearts, not our lives.

After all, Jesus, too, is in the laundry business. But He isn’t washing cloaks with boiling water and soap. No, He is washing us—making us perfectly clean and pure, fit for a king. And He has done it with His own blood.

THE PRAYER: Wash me, Lord Jesus, that I may belong to You. Amen.

Brought to you in partnership with Lutheran Hour Ministrieslhm.org/lent

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About These Devos

SILENT WITNESSES Lenten Devotions 2018

For Christians, the season of Lent is marked by deep reflection on the appearance of the Savior and, naturally, what His life, suffering, death, and resurrection mean for our lives now. God’s human involvement in our world is a perfect example of His intimate love for us. He spared nothing to make Himself known to us—a fact that proclaims in no uncertain terms how “God so loved the world.” In Silent Witnesses, readers will note both the majestic—and mundane—aspects of the Gospel accounts: stories telling how God in His infinite power came down and “has spoken to us by His Son.”

Lutheran Hour Ministries (LHM) is a Christian outreach ministry supporting churches worldwide in its mission of Bringing Christ to the Nations—and the Nations to the Church.