It was 9.10am. I was driving back from school drop off, running late and in a hurry to get to the 9.30am start of Thursday Women, which I was leading that morning. I turned into the one way narrow street, heading steeply up a hill, only just wide enough to get single way cars through. At the top of the hill I came up behind a large lorry, and there I stopped and waited patiently.

A traffic warden came up to me and said the lorry couldn’t get through the narrow section ahead and they were waiting for police to arrive and remove the parked cars on one side. He asked me to do a U turn and head back down the one way street.

‘But I’ll get a ticket from the traffic cameras going the wrong way down a one way street’, I objected. He replied that this was the only way or wait there for an unforeseen amount of time.

Breaking the law goes heavy against my conscience so I waited. But as the minutes ticked on I attempted a 3 point (in this case 25 point!) turn in this impossibly narrow street.

Ten minutes later I was facing the wrong way down the one way street, looking headlong into the angry looking faces of the long line of drivers that had now built up behind me, who had no idea what the true cause of the problem was. As far as they were concerned I was the cause.

It was near impossible to drive back down passed these cars and I attempted to explain to each one what was going on, but most refused to even wind their window down to listen and just gave me one of those looks of disgust and turned away. I felt so embarrassed, I knew I was doing something that was wrong but I’d been told to do it from the authorities and was just obeying instructions.

As I squeezed past one man he wound his window down and I had the chance to explain that it was a lorry ahead that had stuck and couldn’t move. Very politely he said, ‘well that lorry doesn’t look stuck, it’s moving’. I turned back in horror to find he was right, the lorry had gone!

The humiliation of trying to squeeze the wrong way down past all the cars, making them shift over to one side to make room for my large 4 wheel drive, angry faces glaring and no way of explaining was stinging me. The feeling of humiliation was sinking deep inside the pit of my stomach and I had no way of excusing my situation.

Then I remembered Jesus. He’d been flung out in front of an angry crowd, hung on that cross with everyone walking past, men, women and children staring up at him in disgust. Those that didn’t know who he was would be thinking he’d got there deservedly for doing something bad or mad. He’d have seen their faces of condemnation and disgust. He couldn’t explain he’d done nothing wrong, that he was innocent and was only doing what he’d been instructed to do.

So as I turned once again to do a 25 point turn in a one way street to drive the right way up, with the burn of disgusted looks from the angry pedestrians as this mad woman blocked their walk way, I thanked God he’d given me just a tiny insight into a part of what Jesus went through for us.

Humiliated, despised, rejected, tortured, beaten – for obeying instructions he’d been given. All for the love of those he came to save.

Thank you Jesus - especially from me.