Did you ever play “connect the dots” as a child? Maybe you had an activities book with pages for coloring, word-finds, tic-tac-toe and other games. You’d turn to a page with an incomplete illustration; to determine what the object was, you’d draw lines to link the numbered dots. It might turn out to be a duck, a donkey, the Eiffel Tower, or an ice cream cone. You didn’t know what it was until you’d connected all the dots.
Life can be like that. As we’re going through it, it might seem like a random assortment of twists and turns, exits and on-ramps, with some unknown destination. It seems confusing as we plod through life’s circumstances one day at a time, but through the beauty of hindsight we can glance backward and find order in the chaos.
Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computers, once observed about the course life takes, "You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So, you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future."
Have you ever felt that way? I know I have. A description for much of my life, particularly my working career, could be, “You can’t get there from here. You have to go someplace else first.” I was born in Germany, where my father was stationed in the U.S. Army. We traveled to the United States by ship and eventually settled in New Jersey. After high school I attended college in Texas, then transferred to a university in Ohio to study journalism.
My 10-year career as a newspaper editor took me from a community newspaper in Ohio to a suburban newspaper in Pennsylvania, back to the Ohio newspaper, and finally to Texas. Next, I moved my family to Chattanooga, where I joined the staff of a Christian ministry, and 17 years later, a sister ministry with an international focus. After three years I became part of the team for a non-profit based in Atlanta. Can you see the convoluted path my career has taken?
All I can say in summary is that God has done “immeasurably more than all [I could] ask or imagine…” (Ephesians 3:20). During this journey of more than 50 years, some of the changes I made didn’t make a lot of sense. However, as Jobs said, even though I couldn’t connect the dots looking forward, I now can connect them looking backward.
As Christians all around the world prepare for the annual observances of Good Friday and Easter, we might apply the same “connecting the dots” principle to what we now know about Jesus Christ. The Bible’s Old Testament contains numerous prophecies about the birth, life, death and resurrection of Christ, all made hundreds, even thousands of years before God took on flesh and invaded this world. Here’s a handful of examples:
From the prophet Micah we read, “But as for you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you One will go forth from Me to be ruler in Israel. His goings forth are from long ago, from the days of eternity” (Micah 5:2). Jesus, of course, was born in Bethlehem.
The prophet Isaiah prophesied, “Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call Him Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14). In Matthew 1:18-23 and Luke 1:26-35 we read about a virgin, Mary, who was pledged to marry Joseph. The angel Gabriel tells her that God has chosen her to be mother to the Son of God, and the passage states, “…they will call Him ‘Immanuel’ – which means, ‘God with us’” (Matthew 1:23).
Isaiah 9:1-7 is one of the longest prophecies in the Old Testament, describing Jesus’ ministry centered in Galilee. “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned…. For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on His shoulders. And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. There will be no end to His government or of peace, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness from then on and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this.”
Jesus’ crucifixion was prophesied in Psalm 22:14-16, “I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax; it has melted away within me…. Dogs have surrounded me, a band of evildoers has encircled me; they have pierced my hands and my feet…. They divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.” Zechariah 12:10 says, “…They look on me, the one they have pierced….”
The crucifixion accounts are included in each of the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. What’s especially interesting about the Old Testament crucifixion prophecies is they were made hundreds of years before the Romans invented that heinous, excruciating form of execution.
And Christ’s resurrection from the dead – also reported in each of the gospels – was prophesied in Psalm 16:9-10, “Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices…because You will not abandon me to the grave, nor will You let Your Holy One see decay.”
I wonder, as these prophecies were being made, if the prophets had any idea of how they would be fulfilled by Jesus in such spectacular fashion. Those men of old might have struggled to “connect the dots,” but we can today as we look backward with 20:20 vision through the pages of history.
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