WHAT ARNOLD SAW

Arnold and Barbara Rowland want to experience something they've never done before--they want to see a president of the United States, not on TV, but up close and personal. This is their day to do it, so at 12:15, they choose a spot where they'll get that up close and personal view of the President as he passes by in a parade of cars.

As Arnold stands there waiting for the President's car (the car is two miles away), he glances up and looks across the street where a man catches his eye. The man is standing in an upper floor window of a building. He's holding a rifle with a scope across his chest, the position the military calls at port arms. Arnold knows that there are special agents who will be guarding the President's route and he wants his wife to see one.

Rowland, excited about what he's seen, says to Barbara, "Hey, you wanna see a Secret Service man?"

But there's a problem: she's got her eye on a disturbance across the street where two police officers are trying to assist a young man who's having an epileptic fit. Distracted, and still watching the medical problem develop, Barbara asks, "Where?"

By the time she looks across the street, the Secret Service agent has stepped back into the shadows, away from the window. Barbara asks, "What did he look like?" Rowland describes how he was holding a weapon, a big, high-powered, heavy rifle, no .22 caliber.

Barbara sighs and says, "I wish I could have seen him. He's probably in another part of the building now, watching people."

She returns to looking across the street where an ambulance has arrived to carry the epileptic to the hospital.

But Arnold isn't satisfied; he keeps scanning the upper floors of the building to catch another glimpse of the slender Secret Service agent, one he guesses is in his early thirties, so Barbara can see him too. But he never sees him in the window again; he doesn't mention it to a policeman standing nearby.

TOO BAD

Too bad Arnold didn't say something to the policeman. Arnold wasn't looking at a Secret Service agent; he was looking at Lee Harvey Oswald who would kill the President 14 minutes and 45 seconds later.

If Arnold had said something to the policeman, he might have changed the course of world history. But the problem was, Arnold Rowland didn't understand what he was looking at.

FLASHBACK

On Friday, April 3, 34 AD, there were those who didn't know what they were looking at as they saw Jesus during His trials and while He was hanging on a cross: Roman soldiers mocked Him as "King of the Jews;" those passing by got sarcastic; the two criminals dying on either side of Him insulted  Him. The religious scholars thought they were looking at a law-breaker who deserved all He was getting and more, so to add to the humiliation, they taunted Him.

All the predictions of the Messiah's death were meeting at the cross and the scholars of the Book couldn't or wouldn't see them. In particular, Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53 were wrapping themselves around the cross. All the miracles their ancient Book had predicted that the Messiah would do, Jesus had done, yet when they saw the miracles right before their eyes, they couldn't or wouldn't "see" them.

WHAT DO YOU SEE?

What do you see when you look at the cross? Do you see it as the material of myth and legend? A bit of fake news invented by His students, but who really had nothing to gain by doing so?

Or do you see the cross for what it is: the wood on which the Son of God paid the complete penalty for your sins?

It's the season we celebrate the death and resurrection of the Son of God, but are you distracted as Barbara was on November 22, 1963, so distracted that you don't see it? Or are you like Arnold and see the cross, but refuse to see it for what it really is?

How you see the cross will change your history forever.