Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread. Our reading titled, And It Was Night, was written by Tim Gustafson.

Ellie Viesel's book, Night, starkly confronts us with the horrors of the Holocaust. Based on his own experiences in Nazi death

camps, Vizel's account flips the biblical story of the Exodus. While Moses and the Israelites

escaped slavery at the first Passover, Vizel tells of the Nazis arresting Jewish leaders following

Passover. Lest we criticize Vizel and his dark irony,

consider that the Bible contains a similar plot twist.

On the night of Passover,

Jesus, expected to free God's people from suffering,

instead permits himself to be arrested by those who would kill him.

John users us into the holy scene before Jesus' arrest. Troubled in spirit over what

awaited him. At the last supper, Jesus predicted his betrayal. Then in an act we can scarcely comprehend,

Christ served his betrayer bread. John 1330 reads,

As soon as Judas had taken the bread, he went out, and it was night.

History's greatest injustice was underway.

Yet Jesus declared in verse 31,

Now the son of man is glorified, and God is glorified in him.

In a few hours, the disciples would experience panic, defeat, and dejection. But Jesus saw God's plan unfolding as it should. When it seems as

though the darkness is winning, we can recall that God faced his dark night and defeated it.

He walks with us. It won't always be night.

Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is from John chapter 13 verses 21 through 32.

After he had said this, Jesus was troubled in spirit and testified,

Very truly I tell you, one of you is going to betray me.

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