Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 219 · August 7
Ye Would Not
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!”
Picture a mother hen standing with her wings held open, and no chicks underneath them.
That is the picture Jesus used, and the conversation it came out of makes it heavier still. Some Pharisees had just told Him to get away, "for Herod will kill thee." He sent them back with a message: "Go ye, and tell that fox." Then He gave His reason for going on toward Jerusalem: "it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem." He was speaking about the very city that was going to kill Him, and what came out of Him was grief, with the name said twice: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem."
"How often" is the phrase to stay with. It tells us that Jesus had been offering shelter for a long time, and that it had been turned down for a long time. Luke lets "ye would not" stand as the last words of the sentence, and nothing in the paragraph mends it: "Behold, your house is left unto you desolate." Only one door is left open, and it comes with one condition. The city has to say a line with its own mouth: "Ye shall not see me, until the time come when ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." It costs nothing to say, and yet that door opens only from the inside.
The city He wept over would not say it, so the picture stays where He left it, with the wings still open. That is the sorrow of this passage, and it is also its hope, because those wings have not closed. The same Jesus who grieved over Jerusalem still holds them open to anyone who will come. You can come under them today, and He will gather you in.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 219 is Boldness and Access (Ephesians 3:12).