It is finished

A soldier stood there—dust on his boots, sweat on his brow, bitterness in his bones.

He had drawn the short straw that morning, assigned to guard a tomb—

not of a king, not of a threat,

but of a broken, lifeless body wrapped in linen and mystery.

“This is a waste of time,” he muttered to his comrade, his voice sharp with contempt and confusion.

What was Rome afraid of?

The man was dead.

The movement was over.

The cross had seen to that.

Still, the unease gnawed at him.

He had gambled for the man’s robe,

mocked his silence, laughed with the others when he didn’t come down from the cross.

“He saved others,” they had scoffed.

“But himself—he cannot save.”

But something in that final cry—

It is finished— had struck him like a blow to the chest. Not a cry of defeat.

No, it had sounded like… victory.

Like something had been accomplished.

And then, there was the look.

That gaze.

That steady, bleeding, broken-eyed gaze from the cross that seemed to see him.

Not just the soldier, not just the scoffer,

but the man inside the armor.

The man with the weary soul and the aching heart he didn’t even know he had.

He stood now at the mouth of the tomb,

the robe he had won folded in his pack,

a quiet ache in his chest he didn’t understand.

He was watching over the grave of a man who had forgiven with his dying breath.

A man who had bled mercy.

A man who hadn’t fought back.

Why didn’t he fight back?

Why would someone with such power

hang there and die

for people like them?

He didn’t know.

He couldn’t know.

Not yet.

Because the earth was still for a moment,

but it was holding its breath.

The stone was still in place,

but heaven was already moving.

That tomb wasn’t a prison—it was a womb.

And Sunday was coming.

In just a little while,

death would lose its grip,

light would break through rock,

and a cry of life would echo louder than the cry of death had ever dared.

The soldier didn’t know

that the man he mocked was the Messiah he needed. That robe he had won was stained with blood that could cleanse his soul.

That silence he scorned was the sound of sacrifice.

And that Jesus—

the one who chose the nails,

who chose the silence,

who chose to stay on that cross instead of saving himself—

had done it

so that even he

could be saved.

And still He whispers,

to the soldiers and the scoffers,

to the weary and the wandering—

even now:

It is finished.

And it was all for you.

Sunday is coming🤍