Connections in Blood

Yesterday they paraded through the gulley yelling and dragging the buffalo behind them.  The tween boys and young men grinned up at me on the balcony and I grinned down.  The air was clear, wiped cool and clean by the cyclone on the coast.  There was light, almost fall like rain dripping from a slate sky.  The buffalo's flanks heaved and heavy garlands hung round his neck.  He is tomorrow's sacrifice (today at 8:30 was the big brown billy goat...tomorrow Mr. Bass the Buff). 

I could hear other boys yelling on other gulleys not ones I know, not ones whose mother's I know but still the same.  A sense of festivity, excitement, delight.  A feast for the beast to nuzzle provided for a few days prior to fatten the sacrificial animal.  Jesus broke bread, drank wine and then He and his disciples went out into the night singing a hymn (a psalm). 

I often focus on the act of sacrifice in my thoughts but the pre-parades hit me this year with a startling reality.  Jesus' parade.  Jahvaid whacking the buffalo lightly on the rump as we greeted one another, Jesus being whipped, dressed up and paraded.  The sacrifice to come.  The blood would run.

I am overwhelmed with thanksgiving as I think of my salvation through Jesus' work.  Overwhelmed.  Unlike the buffalo dipping his lips into grain, Jesus as he dipped his hand into the bread bowl knew, was allowing, a sacrifice to happen.  His own.  It is finished.