Make It As Sure As Ye Can

Despite being so convinced of Jesus's fraud and blasphemy that they had him executed, the ruling leaders of the Jews still had some fears that Jesus really was the Son of God and they asked Pilate to assist them just in case Jesus really did rise from the dead. "Pilate said unto them, Ye have a watch: go your way, make it as sure as ye can." (Matthew 27:65). So they sealed the cave by rolling the biggest stone they could find in front of it and they tasked an elite force of Roman soldiers to guard it and prayed that it would be enough. It wasn't. Despite all of their precautions and preparations, Christ rose all the same. There are times in our life that we may choose to abandon and reject and rebel against God and everything He stands for. Through some combination of pain and anger and pride, we have become disillusioned and distrustful of our Heavenly Father's existence or His goodness or His plan for us specifically or the world in general. We may decide like the rulers of Jerusalem to slay Christ in our hearts and then lock His body in a stone tomb and seal it and put guards over it, and, as Pilate says, make it as sure as we can. We might even convince ourselves that our efforts will work. We have so thoroughly extinguished the light of Christ within us, so encased our heart in impregnable armor, so thoroughly renounced our faith and everything it stands for, so completely immersed ourselves in the mists of darkness, that Christ will never, ever reach us again, never rise forth from the stone tomb in which we sealed Him, or make it past the guards we have set to watch over them. It didn't work for the Sanhedrin 2000 years ago and it won't work for us now. There is nowhere that Christ's love and mercy cannot reach. There is nothing that we can do that will effectively stop Him from reaching out to us and inviting and enticing and beckoning and pleading for us to come back to Him. I hope that if in the bitterness of our soul we have sealed off or hearts from Christ and made them as sure as we can against Him getting in, that we will recognize the futility of our efforts and open ourselves back up to the light and love and joy that the Savior is anxiously waiting to pour into our hearts.