The Thief Who Got a Promise

There were three crosses on the hill that day, and the middle one held Jesus.

They led him up to a place called the Skull, just outside the walls of Jerusalem, and they put him there between two robbers. Two men who had done wrong things. The kind of wrong that lands you on a cross next to nobody, at the end of everything.

It was the end for all three of them. Everyone knew it. The crowd looked up and laughed. "Save yourself!" they shouted. "If you're really the King." It was the same joke the soldiers had made when they pressed the crown of thorns onto his head, and it had followed him all the way up the hill.

He could have saved himself. He could have come down whenever he wanted. But he stayed, because coming down would have meant leaving us behind, and he would not leave us behind.

One of the robbers sneered too. "Aren't you the Chosen One? Then get us out of here!" His voice was sharp and bitter and afraid.

But the other robber stopped his mocking. He turned his head and looked at the man in the middle. The one who wasn't shouting back. The one who, even now, was whispering, "Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing."

Something in him softened, the way a fist softens into an open hand.

"Stop," he said to the angry one. "We're getting what we deserve. But this man never did one wrong thing."

Then he did the bravest, smallest thing a person can do. His life was nearly over. He had nothing left in his hands, no time to fix what he'd broken, no way to make it right. He just whispered, "Jesus. Remember me when you come into your kingdom."

That was his whole prayer. Remember me.

Maybe you have felt that, deep down. The feeling that it's too late for you. That you waited too long, or wandered too far to ever be carried home. Maybe you think there's a line, and you stepped over it, and now the door is shut.

With his last breaths, with the world still laughing at him, Jesus turned his face to that dying man and answered him. "Today you will be with me in paradise."

Today, before the sun even set, with no time left to earn anything. The robber had no good deeds to hold up and no chance to start over. He had only asked. And Jesus had been waiting his whole life to be asked.

He went all the way down to the worst hill, on the worst day, for the man everyone else had given up on. He came for the very last person, at the very last second, and called him friend.

So turn your head toward him, the way the robber did. There is no line you can cross that puts you past his reach. And on that hill, the rescue was not finished. It was almost the middle of the day, and something strange was about to happen to the sun.