Have you ever felt like you needed a hero? Someone to smash through the hurt and pain of this life, lift it up in the air and vault it into space, never to be seen again? I believe we have all felt this at one time or another in our lives. This need is especially heightened during those days when the weight of the world seems heaviest; bearing down on your heart and threatening to crush your soul.
“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” — Ecclesiastes 1:9
We are all familiar with this bastion of world history. The great Colosseum in Rome. This impressive structure was commissioned by the Roman Emperor Vespasian around AD 70-72. Officially opening with a 100 days of games celebration in AD 80 by Vespasian’s son, Titus, it would remain a working theater for Roman “games” for centuries to come. These games would become immortalized in our age by the famous Hollywood movies, “Gladiator” starring Russell Crowe and “Spartacus” starring Kirk Douglas. However, these movies give only a minor glimpse of the entire scope of events that were held within the circular walls of this imposing structure.
“It seemed that out of every tear of a martyr new confessors were born, and that every groan on the arena found an echo in thousands of breasts. Caesar was swimming in blood, Rome and the whole pagan world was mad.
But those who had had enough of transgression and madness, those who were trampled upon, those whose lives were misery and oppression, all the weighed down, all the sad, all the unfortunate, came to hear the wonderful tidings of God, who out of love for men had given Himself to be crucified and redeem their sins.
When they found a God whom they could love, they had found that which the society of the time could not give any one, — happiness and love.”
― Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo Vadis
Many early Christians chained in stocks beneath the cheering crowds above them might have posed the same question I asked earlier. Do you think they might have prayed for a hero to rescue them from the certain death that lay just outside the bars of their cells? Do you think they trembled with fear as their world crumbled around them?
I believe they did pray; but I also believed they realized the Hero they searched for had already visited the earth only a short time before, blasting through the chains of sin and death. Who was this hero you ask? Who could have possibly given these pitiful, persecuted Christians hope as they stood barefoot in the sand of the arena floor, listening to the deafening roars of thousands of people crying for their death?
The answer is simple. He Is. He Was. And He Is to come.
His name is Jesus. The Name above all names. The true Hero who puts all superheroes to shame. And the hope and peace that surrounded the early Christians martyrs is the same hope and peace that surrounds us today. The same Hero who stood in the Colosseum preparing to take his beloved home as the great beasts drew nearer is the same Hero who stands waiting for us, when our time has come.
“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” — 2 Corinthians 4:16-18
The roar of your life might be deafening, but take heart my friend, if you believe in Jesus, it will not overtake you. There is hope. There is grace. Their is renewal.
And there is eternity, waiting for us.
May our groans point towards the glory of Christ and find an echo in many generations to come.
Beyond Room 908 