Luke 13:34-35 "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! Look, your house is left to you desolate. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.' "

True love hopes that the loved one will respond in love, but can never demand it. The intensity of genuine love is not weakened by silence, carelessness or even antagonism; but joy gives way to pain. Jesus looked over the city of Jerusalem with pain in His heart. Despite its long history of killing godly prophets,and more recently rejecting the Messiah they claimed to be awaiting, Jesus loved Jerusalem because Father God had chosen to reveal His Name there (2 Chronicles 6:6).

Jesus was the finest expression of God's Name and so He loved the city and its people so much, wanting to be their Saviour, but they did not want His love at all. No wonder John wrote, "He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognise him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him." (John 1:10-11). But how painful was that? It exceeds the anguish of a parent whose child has become wild, or a wife whose husband has been unfaithful. And so Jesus said that He would abandon them until He would come in glory. The triumphal words were spoken prophetically on Palm Sunday but will be fulfilled on the Final Day.

Within 40 years of Jesus' statement, Jerusalem was destroyed and its inhabitants had to flee. Today, the city is divided. But on the Day when Jesus returns, Zechariah 14:4 says that His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives. Then "every eye will see Him" (Revelation 1:7), and will mourn because they realise the horror of their lost opportunity to respond to God's love. All the more reason for us who know Him to allow Him to 'spread His wings over us', encouraging others to do the same: welcoming His love and receiving His grace.