Better Let Me Go First

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The ice covered by a thin layer of fresh snow made drivers and pedestrians cautious this morning. I have a short hill to climb on my way to work and since I’ve fallen on that hill a couple of times, I was planning on taking extra care on the way up. A city plow/sander was working on the other side. He crossed the street and just as I started up the hill, the driver beeped his horn. I stepped off the sidewalk to let him by. He rolled to a stop beside me, opened his window and said: “Better let me go first; I have sand.” I thanked him.

“Better let me go first; I have sand.”

On that last night before Jesus went to the cross, He tried to explain to His disciples what was going to happen. But the struggle to understand, or perhaps to accept what He was telling them, was too much. At the end of John 16, Jesus finally says, “I came from the Father and entered the world; now I am leaving the world and going back to the Father” (vs. 28). They GOT that.

It would take the disciples a little time to figure all the rest out.

As I carefully worked my way up my little hill this morning, following the nice young man in the sander, I recognized a parallel. Like my nice young man, Jesus was saying in His own way: “Better let me go first; I have sand.”

Well, maybe not exactly that! But He was telling His disciples that because He was going ahead of them, the struggle with sin and its consequences was going to be eliminated. His death and subsequent resurrection would take care of all that. Because He went first and took my place on HIS hill, the danger to my soul no longer exists.

The city employee is his sander might never think of the spiritual significance of his gesture in the grey dawn of this Monday morning. But I won’t forget. I won’t forget how I got safely up the hill and I won’t forget to be thankful to the Lord today for going on ahead of me to prepare a way for me to get Home safely.

“Better let me go first; I have sand.”