Radical Trust
Stagione 3
Healing the Soul
Stagione 2
Ransom
My God, My God
What You Look For
Something Sudden
What's In It For Me?
A Thought on Thanks
Where Are You From?
Heaven's Lost and Found
di JR Dickey
His very being was being destroyed, his soul was sick and he knew it. The turmoil of illness put him in a sickbed and whether real or imagined, he seemed to have enemies all around.
Now, understand, no one owes a life to Satan, the debt is owed to God but it is a debt, a ransom, that only He Himself could redeem. So much of God’s character is all about redemption.
How many of us have cried out in a similar fashion as truly minor echoes of this blast that resounded throughout the cosmos and perhaps throughout all time. Was this a point in which He could not see the ‘other side’? The Bible tells us, “who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross…” What did He hold on to as He let go of His life?
The Pharisees ‘lived in the pages’ of scripture but they were blind to the truth because their own agendas.
There’s something wonderfully sudden when we recognize and accept Jesus Christ as God’s Son and our Savior. The Old Testament has many instances of sudden judgement, but the New Testament shows us over and over the sudden realization of the Son.
They loved Jesus and they wanted heaven, but if even the rich were kind of going hitless (pardon my baseball analogies) and they themselves were basically penniless – well: Then Peter said, "See, we have left all and followed You." The unspoken but clear implication was, “So then, what’s in it for us??”
Now, none of Christ’s encounters were by chance. He headed through Samaria for a reason, and it may have been to meet this small group of desperate people plagued with leprosy. As I read the above verses this morning, the part that caught my attention was, “And so it was that as they went, they were cleansed.” It was a test of their faith and a testimony to the priest(s).
It is so sobering to think that you could be so mistaken in your assumptions as to believe that heaven’s door will be open to you and then you hear from Jesus, “I do not know you…”. Then you step back and claim, “But we ate and drank in your presence…” all to no avail.
So, he’s got 100 sheep, and one wanders off. He leaves the 99 to go after the one who is lost but where does he leave them – in the wilderness. His total focus is on the one. Oh, he loves the 99 and presumably has an under-shepherd to care for them in the wilderness, but our lesson is that he is consumed with caring about the lost one.
Jesus was attractive, like a magnet, to OUTsiders. Here, a woman who was morally repulsive to Simon the Pharisee entered his house at great risk and put on a display of love and humility that was amazingly unusual, mind-bogglingly unusual, even freakishly unusual.