Listen closely: “My time is near. I will observe the Passover with my disciples at your house” (Matthew 26:18). “My time is near.” The chosen time! The appointed time! The time our Lord had set from eternity itself was now at hand. The set time for all of our Savior’s final steps! To the upper room. To the garden. To Judas who betrayed him with a kiss. To the trials. To the scourgings. To the spitting. To the stone pavement and the trial before Pontius Pilate. To the Via Dolorosa—the road of sorrows. To the center cross on Golgotha, where God’s Lamb would forever finish the messy business of washing away the stench of humanity’s sin. Yours and mine included. “The teacher says . . . my time is near,” is the same Savior who hung on the cross, because he peered down the corridors of time to see us fall victim again and again to our sinful nature, to see how, especially when life is hard, we can get on each other’s nerves. We can get testy. We can get crabby. We can get a little worried, more than a little fearful. But God’s Lamb knew all about that. And he paid for all of that too. Because nothing takes our Lord by surprise. Nothing, no one, not death, not even the gates of hell can undermine his plans. His final steps led to the upper room, exactly as planned.