For the Love - Day 26

This passage ... 

This passage just blows my mind. Every. Single. Time. 

You know - Jesus walked - way out of his way to have this conversation with this woman on this day; at least 40 miles. Probably more - because this was not Kansas - there were serious terrain issues to consider.  

It's as if Jesus' phone buzzed and He said: "Oooh ... time to go meet that lady"

Ya know - Saul - who was to become the Apostle Paul - some say the greatest apostle who ever lived - or at least without whom Christianity would not be the same - was alive and well at this time.  

Jesus did not go to see him.  It just wasn't time to go see Saul-who-was-to-become-Paul.

So - Jesus not only walks a really long way to see this woman - but walks through a whole country of people who might have liked the Jews as much as the Jews generally liked them. Then He gets into one of the longest one-on-one conversations of His entire ministry.  Oh yeah - and - she's basically a sex worker.  And He proceeds to tell her point blank, in no uncertain terms who He is - and what His ministry means to her, her people, and the world.  He ends this one-on-one with her with the words "I am the Messiah."

This is a real head-scratcher folks!

I mean - in John 3 - Jesus spends half as much time talking to Nicodemus - a famous teacher of that time.  

We don't even have more than a sentence or two of conversation between Jesus and some of His disciples ... but Jesus lays it all out for this woman.  

I'm sure she didn't have a list of reasons running lose in her mind regarding why God owed it to her to send His Son to her well to give her a drink of water.  I'm sure she didn't imagine herself to be the kind that God's own Son would walk 40+ miles to see.  

So - what was Jesus reason for doing this? Does He need one?

Quick question ... is there a reason you imagine Jesus can't use you? Or why He wouldn't show up at your "well" tomorrow? 

What if He's already there - just waiting for you to say the same words this woman said on a hot dusty afternoon so long ago?

Actually - I'm pretty sure you are just who He's looking for.

For the Love - Day 25

You knew when this started that this verse would be in the mix somewhere - and if you've figured out that we're going through Scripture book by book - then you probably knew we were headed here soon.  You're smart that way.

This is the one that turned my thinking around - oh - about twenty years ago.  The fact says "For God so loved the world ..." really stopped me in my tracks one day.  It doesn't say for God was so pissed at the world, or for God was so sick of the world for messing up - or fed up, or impatient ...  I'm pretty sure there's not one typo in this whole verse.

If you'd asked me back then to list off everything you needed to figure out in order to be as Christian a Christian as you could be - I'm pretty sure I'd have handed you a lengthy list of scary stuff.  I can say this pretty safely because I still have all my journals from that back then - and they have loads of such lists.  

Along our journey of faith many things can be helpful - but there's no motivation for chasing after God - after being transformed into someone who looks like Jesus like love. Every other motivation will go weird on you.  Love however - is self-calibrating along the way - the more we love God - the better we get at loving Him, each other - even ourselves.  If you read the New Testament - you realize that there's an important link between obedience and love; but God's motivation was love.  If we obey because we love - we'll grow our faith healthy and strong and we'll realize that obedience can teach us much about love.  It doesn't work for us to motivate obedience to Jesus out of fear any more than it works to raise kids in fear.  

Maybe this is why this was Jesus' motivation for going through it all.  I used to debate with a friend about just how loving God is or isn't ... and I'd frequently ask ... "well ... if it's not Love that motivated Jesus - what else could make someone willing to go through such a thing as incarnation, a difficult life, and then a torturous terrible death?" 

There wasn't another answer for Jesus.

There's no better answer for us either. 

If this motivation hadn't been everything for Jesus - we'd have no Christmas - and we sure wouldn't have Easter.  We wouldn't have anything.

For the Love - Day 24

This passage is seriously among my favorites in the entire Bible.  

I mean - Jesus shows up at a wedding of all places - you know - like Messiahs do.  He must have really lit that party on fire - because as soon as He shows up - they run out of the good stuff.  And the not so good stuff.  And the bad stuff.  Actually - who knows.

Now - according to what I was pretty sure I'd always been taught - this is the point at which Jesus stood up and very sternly declared; "Well. Serves you right!"

Or maybe this is where He pulls out His speech on how them running out is God's judgment on their terrible wedding reception.

If Jesus had done that - honestly - wouldn't it be much easier to understand?

But in just the most shocking plot-twist ever - Jesus makes MORE wine.

He could've made grape juice. He could've made grape cool-aid.  He could've made the best tasting non-alcoholic wine of all time.  He could've made coffee and sobered them completely.

But no. 

He made wine.

The best wine.

Why?

Why would Jesus give a bunch of partyers - barrels of wine?

Did He imagine that they'd sip it like a saints - while praying?  I cannot believe that Jesus was ignorant about the goings on at weddings.

No - simply put - Jesus gave them wine - because He wanted to - and because celebrating is ... okay?  He gave them the best wine ever - because he trusted them to do with what He gave them - what they should do with it. 

I don't know about you - but I like living in a world where Jesus gives people something that they could make a whole lot of trouble with - yet He gave it to them anyway.  Jesus is okay with us doing something a little dangerous now and again.  He's okay with us being people and doing the things that people do - like toasting at a wedding.  Some how - Him giving these people something they could've just been awful with - inspires me more than a lot of other passages to be worthy of such trust.

For the Love - Day 23

Can you even read those words without singing the Sunday-school song? I cannot.  And we all sing this little tune was with a lavish amount of finger wagging and head-shaking - you know - like a scolding parent - because of course - this song could only be about naughty Zacchaeus caught in the naughty act of tree-climbing. 

But that's not what this passage is about at all!

Here's a guy who'd - lets just get real for a second - found a way to live prosperously despite having a serious disadvantage.  A way mind you, that required far more brain than brawn.  We also know that he was good at it because he wasn't just any old tax collector - he was the chief tax collector of Jericho.  Corner office, chauffeured donkey.  The whole bit.

While we don't have any specific information about Zacchaeus's own life beyond this passage - it was not uncommon for tax collectors to be shunned by their communities; today still some might say. Sure he was up in a tree because he was too short to see Jesus amidst all the crowd - but come on - most of the houses of that time were built for roof-top BBQ's and such.  How come he didn't just hang out on someone's roof to watch the Messianic parade go by?  Maybe - because he wouldn't have been invited up - or worse - was afraid (truly - and smartly) of being thrown off?

What's more - Jesus didn't finger wag, point, nag and scold.  He didn't need to because - well - for starters, Jesus is waaaaay cooler than all that patronizing, told-you-so non-sense; but more importantly - Zaachaeus was already drawn to Jesus and sought Him out.  We are not told that Jesus walked under Zacchaeus's office window.

From there it just gets better.  

Zacchaeus didn't hesitate.  He came straight down with zero debate and led Jesus straight to his house.  Then he laid out of a feast.  He was a man of means hosting one of the most famous men of their time in front of his entire entourage and the whole community - he couldn't dare not to.  Then he asked Jesus to fill out some complicated bureaucratic form, some 99948392438948290-PDQ - in triplicate - and then he'd give the poor some minuscule percentage of some ridiculous calculation ...

No.

You almost get the sense that the guests were all mid-chew when Zacchaeus - maybe stands up (on a chair maybe) - and shouts over the din and clatter that he's turning over a new leaf and he's now going to give one half of his wealth to the poor - PLUS - if anyone's been wronged by him - he'll make it right - four times over.

I think we might forgive Zacchaeus' wife for having dropped the soup tureen at this point. He's just promised to beggar the family - in front of Jesus and every single who's who in town!  No take-backsies now.

And Jesus' announcement that salvation has come to the house is an amazing compliment.  He even calls Zacchaeus a true son of Abraham - something maybe no one has called him in a while - or ever.  Zacchaeus didn't buy this compliment with his gestures and words - but rather declared it to be an obvious truth - Zacchaeus got it.   He was a Kingdom man now.  

Of course Jesus didn't love Zacchaeus more after lunch than He did before lunch.  But like the Woman at the well, Legion, the tenth Leper - what a privilege to be so able to please the savior.  I can't imagine Jesus not smiling as He spoke those words in verse 9.  I can't imagine Zacchaeus not basking in Jesus' company and praise.  

How many of us could wish to be as big a man as Zacchaeus was?  I know some days I behave more like Zacchaeus the day before he climbed the tree.  Ya know - He still sees us sitting in our trees, tells us he wants to have lunch with us, and smiles when we give our hearts fully to Him. 

For the Love - Day 22

Most Bible-y types think of 1 Corinthians 13 as the "love chapter" - but I seriously think that there are multiple contenders for that title - and Luke 15 is not the least among them.  This chapter starts with the lost sheep - which the shepherd ditches 99% of his herd to go find.  Then it talks about the lost coin - which leads a woman to tear her whole house apart (been there) - and ends with this incredible parable of the prodigal son - which has been inspiring people since Jesus first told it.  

It's one thing if you're sitting somewhere and hear a clever analogy of God's love for us - but it's another thing all together to have God's own Son describing his Father's love for us.  You probably have your own favorite expositions on these 20 verses - or at least I hope you do.  

When was the last time you read this parable? Rembrandt painted his conception of the clinching moment of the tale.  Henri Nouwen wrote book about it.  The more I read it - the easier it is for me to set aside my striving and rest in God's grace.  How does this parable effect you?

For the Love - Day 21

Yesterday's post looked at how deeply Jesus' felt how lost and directionless the crowd was - and how His response to this was not only to feel compassion for them - but also to DO something about it.

Today's verse comes from a larger passage that begins in Luke 8:42.  As Jesus is heading on his way to heal someone's sick daughter - a woman - a sick woman - sick with a kind of illness that left her cut off - isolated - probably destitute and devastated - approaches Him and secretly reaches out and touches Him.  

Two things happen immediately:  She's healed. Jesus knows it.

This story gets me in the feels - because this woman is enduring not only the problem of being sickly - but the - as likely as not - much bigger problem of being shamed. 

Jesus could've not healed her. Shoot - He could've even UN-healed her.  He could've ignored her. 

Of course -  none of that is what happened.

What happened is that Jesus stops the whole crowd - the whole jangling, jostling, noisy throng is halted - and silenced in its tracks - and this woman - whom everyone has seen - everyone knows of (and shuns) is made the center of attention - 

And then honored. 

Jesus calls her "Daughter" - a tender address indeed - unlike the way He addressed every other woman.

And then He tells her - that it was her faith that healed her.  Usually He asked people if they had faith - but not this woman.  He tells the whole crowd that HER faith healed her.  He didn't even keep any credit for Himself. 

He fully restored this woman in that moment. Years of misery. Endless days of shame - REMOVED.  He healed both the physical problem and it's terrible social result.  Shame and sickness gone: esteem and praise in its place.

This passage doesn't include the word love - but I'd argue that it speaks it loud and clear.

For the Love - Day 20

Jesus was never looking for a vacation.  Here He is in this passage - "on tour" so to speak - by boat across the Sea of Galilee - then on foot.  He was preaching, speaking, meeting, greeting - with some exorcism and healing mixed in.  

I mean - this account really begins in Matthew 8 with Jesus in Capernum. They take a boat across the Sea of Galilee - and then they walk to Gadara (I mean - it doesn't say - but let's assume they didn't call an Uber at any rate.  And from there they head to Nazareth - first over the Sea of Galliee again - and the rest of the way on foot.  All in all - two lengthy lake crossings and about 20 miles of walking. 

Okay - forgive me the blow-by-blow road trip itinerary.

When was the last time you crossed a lake - twice - on a trip? Even if there was a sail on both of the boats - this was a LOT of work.

When was the time you mixed your little boat trips up with a 20 mile walk?

I don't know about you - but when I come home from work - I'm beat. I relish my quiet moments after returning home.

Can you imagine coming back home after a trip like that and finding that a crowd has gathered at your front door? Not just any ol' crowd that's just coincidentally walking by - but a crowd that's specifically looking for you - to lead them? 

This was the furthest possible thing from a burden to Jesus though. Not only was encountering just such crowds Jesus actual purpose at this point - but He loved seeing these people.  He loved interacting with them.  He hated that they felt so lost and without a shepherd. While He was sure limited by His body in the same way we are - He had the advantage of being in His element in these moments.  Jesus looking on those directionless, leaderless masses and feeling compassion for them was utterly natural to Him. 

And it still is.

Go ahead.

Talk to Him. 

For the Love - Day 19

Singing is such a powerful way to compress emotion into a slice of time.  We sing at birthdays, weddings, and funerals - and at church services in between.  We sing when gathered in large crowds - such as sporting events. 

 And - who doesn't love that scene at the end of the last Lord of the Rings movie - the Return of the King - when Aragorn is finally crowned King - and he makes a tiny speech - and then he sings - and it's so cool!

Imagine.  What would that even sound like for God to sing over you? Would He have a different song for each of us - or would He welcome all with the same song?  We'll have to ask some day.  All I know for sure is that - no one exults over someone with joy who isn't pretty important to them.  

And you thought you felt put on the spot when someone tried to sing to you at your last birthday.

Better get used to it though - I doubt God's going to ratchet back His feelings towards you any time soon.

For the Love - Day 18

God's love isn't just for now - or today. No way! From His vantage point - seeing further back in time than we can imagine - and further forward than can make sense - He's got a plan for each of us that isn't just some obligatory hum drum - but is something that's custom tailored to ignite our passions - calm our souls - and inspire our imaginations!  

Ever been surprised with a birthday gift or dinner?  As nice as it is to enjoy the moment - they put thought into it.  Of course - all that thought probably made all the planning fun.

Imagine the thought God's put into you - into when you were born - and where - and all the gifts and talents you have - God spent ages coordinating all that - and it was intended as a gift - just the right balance to help you become the best possible expression of who you can be. 

For the Love - Day 17

The sweetest relationships we have are with those who stand by us - through storms, through sorrows, through deserts ... through it all.

Those of you who've known me for very long know that I'm extraordinarily blessed to have had God put a worship leader in my life - named Lauren - who took it upon herself to become my discipler.  That was back when I was 19 - which was a little while ago.  Far further into the future than either of could've seen "back in the day" - here we are still having conversations about God - and encouraging each other to keep drawing closer to Him.

But - even Lauren (who's a force to reckon with herself) can not hold a candle to God's staying power. Nor can I. Nor can you. Nor can anyone.  We have to look to God to understand faithfulness ... we mustn't look to one another for it - because this is one of our greatest human frailties.

This verse says all we need to know about God ... "every mountain may disappear ... but I will always be kind and merciful to you." 

We know about kindness failing and mercy falling apart ... but not so with God.  He is a mountain of stability to the mountains when it comes to His determination.  

What burdens do you have? Lay them on God's shoulders. We don't want our burdens - we think we'd gladly trade them in.  We sometimes feel like we have to hide them from one another ... that people only love us because they do not know about them. Not so with God though.  He sees them. He treasures them.  Knowing full well the depths of our hearts - He doesn't love us less, or judge us more.  Rather - He wants to use our burdens, our best - all of us in fact - to reveal to us His kindness, His mercifulness, His heart for us ... in other words ... Himself.  

For the Love - Day 16

Some of the students in JC's really, really love a good scary movie. They love it when the tension climbs through the roof - and then BAM!  

I guess they have a point - better a scary movie - than something scary happening in our lives.

Sometimes life is the scariest thing we see.  We lose our job, our funding for school, we break up, we have a misunderstanding with a loved one, or we get that test back, the doctor tells us we should come to talk over the lab results.

I do not believe that following God promises that nothing scary will ever happen. 

I do believe that whatever happens - even if the scariest we can imagine happens - God will not ditch us.  Not only will He never leave us hanging - but He will use every challenge we face to accomplish the greatest possible good. He isn't the God only of people walking in sunshine. He's the God of those who find themselves in turbulent waters. Not only will He stand by us in those times - but He'll reveal Himself to us in ways that just can't be understood any other season. 

You can tell sometimes even - when you're facing troubled waters - that someone standing next to you has sailed through them with God captaining their ship; they don't flinch.  They don't scatter.  They pass onto you their knowledge of how to make it through the storms.  They perceive the stormy seas as that which teaches real skills - something we're privileged to learn.

It's hard to find any in Scripture who God was able to really use to lead His people who hadn't learned how to steer through storms with Him. In fact - if you read some of their accounts - you get the sense that their whole life lead up to them being able to do so - and their willingness to do that hard thing - turned out to be the biggest blessing for them and those around them. 

I'd like to have those skills too.

Where would we be without Joseph's, David's and Ruth's ability - just to name a few - to navigate the storms with Him? Their willingness to face their fears with God - is a blessing to us even today. 

Whether we're looking at smooth sailing or stormy seas - God will always stand by us reveal Himself to us and grow us into the people He made us to be - and together the people who represent His Kingdom on Earth.

For the Love - Day 15

A long time ago I met with a student who said:  "I know that God loves me. What I want to know though - is does He like me?"

The answer to that question is a resounding YES! God not only loves you - but He likes you.  He enjoys - He treasures you. 

Or - as this verse puts it ... "He brings you into His banqueting hall - and spreads His banner over you - and that banner is love!"

This isn't just the action of someone vaguely tolerating ... it's the the lavishly celebratory action of someone ecstatically over the moon for you!

Even if I'd done everything perfectly that I meant to do - and never at all done any of the things I regret doing - there's still no way I'd deserve such lavishly royal treatment. God's not fooled though - He knows.  And still.  This is not a very different image from the one Jesus paints at the end of the parable of the prodigal son ... but more on that later. The point is - He doesn't love us so lavishly because I earned it - because it pleased Him so much to lavish so much love on one such as me who couldn't deserve it.

You know - this was written by Solomon - who's court was so wise - so fine - that it was the court that everyone around just had to see.  This was no low-brow banquet hall ... the feast God throws over you - His own cherished and treasured one - this was the event of the year ... this was Prince William's Princess Kate's wedding - broadcast all over the known world. He not likes you - but wants to be seen by everyone with you!

When did you last feel so cherished and loved?

If you ask God - He'd say "Yesterday" 

Maybe you felt that way yesterday - or maybe you didn't feel that yesterday ... 

But - take a moment to reflect - that to Him - you are so loved and cherished today.

There are many ways to remind ourselves that God feels this way towards us - among my favorite are meditating on these verses ... and making others feel cherished.  That doesn't have to involve banqueting halls ... sometimes just listening as generously as you can to someone will speak volumes.

For the Love - Day 14

Love covers all sins. 

That's a pretty powerful statement.  But can we in some way see even more clearly how powerful it is?

Let's think about light and dark.  You can stand in a cave - far from the light filtering in through the opening - and see nothing.  Before such an experience in fact - you might have not really experienced total darkness.  

Whether that space is the size of a football stadium - or a small room ... light a candle in the depths of that cave - and the power of light will impress you.  A mere candle's of light is utterly transforming.

Darkness has no such power - at least - I've never heard of anyone measuring "darkness" by it's "candle power."  Darkness in fact is better understood as the absence of light - than the presence of "dark".

If we compare the "dark" of sin to the "light" of love ... I'd argue that the power of light still prevails - because the work Jesus' Love completed on the cross vanquished sin's darkness. Jesus lit a light over the shadow of sin for all time. The light He lit was love - and it was love that motivated Him to suffer to light it.

Love was God's motivation for making everything - and it's pull on us is so strong that virtually all our favorite stories revolve around it. This hunger in us for love is as much God's thumb-print on us as the pull in us to search for Him.  Love heals. Love cleans. Love builds. However much we spend of ourselves to pursue His love - He rewards us exponentially.  It's as if our little gifts of love to Him - are like the little drops of oil left in the widow's jar (2 Kings 4) - which He multiplies over and over to sustain us in our journey closer to Him.  Such is the power of God's love for us. This isn't to say that our journey is always easy, or even always as clear as we'd like.  But we can find reassurance that this Love of His - which He created from nothing just like everything else - is infinitely inexhaustible.  Our lack of clarity and our struggle to find it has nothing to do with Him and everything to do us. His efforts to help to submit and surrender to His will. His love is so great though - that all that submission and surrender not only helps us see Him more clearly - but become more who He made us to be. 

Now that is God's powerful love. Love covers all darkness.

For the Love - Day 13

When I was about seven my family lived a couple of blocks away from a woman named "Mrs. Ward."  Her backyard much larger than ours and she was willing to let us put a garden there.  One of my chores back then was to go over to Mrs. Ward's and take care of the beans; you know - pulling weeds, watering the little plants and eventually - picking the beans themselves. 

I'm pretty sure that as often as not - I pulled up the beans, picked the weeds' flowers, and gibber jabbered at Mrs. Ward forgetting about the watering altogether.  I don't remember Mrs. Ward ever being impatient with me though. In fact - mostly we talked about Bible verses we liked.  It was while hanging out with her in the garden that I asked her about a Psalm I'd read on my own.  In fact - I liked that particular Psalm so much - I'd memorized part of it even - the very first verses I'd memorized on my own ... not to get some forgettable prize from Sunday school - but because I got the words and liked them.  Mrs. Ward said, "Yes. That's a good one."

And of course - that Psalm was Psalm 116.

The Psalm spoke to me because it made God sound like He cared - about me.  It just dumbfounded me that God would care at all about my little life of bicycles, friends, bullies, and perpetual absent-mindedness. 

I can't fathom why these verses sparked these thoughts and I don't propose that they should have the same effect on anyone else - but I do believe that somewhere between the first and the last verses of the Bible there's at least one passage that rings the bell for you too.  Maybe you already know exactly what it is.  Maybe you have a whole list of them written in your Bible's cover.  

I wish you could sit with Mrs. Ward in her garden on a sunny summer afternoon too.  Maybe she had some gift for helping people find "their verses".  But - as fondly as I remember Mrs. Ward - I'm confident God hasn't left the world bereft of wonderful people who can - one way or the other - spark your imagination regarding our God who not only could but would be interested in your life - all the big and small bits of it. 

For the Love - Day 12

This Psalm - written by David himself - the appeal is complete. Total!  Can you be more rescued than by God's own lovingkindness? If God helps you - what would He leave lacking?  But if He saves you from disaster with His lovingkindness - what might be left out of that?  You can have nothing amiss at all in your life - and yet God could still save you - from what you can't even see or hear - or fathom. 

Yet for all the times God tells us how He feels about us - this isn't a compulsory chore ... a task on God's to to list.  He delights in us - not very differently from how we delight in our children.  What wouldn't we do to help them.

Have you asked for God to help you? To rescue you? To even save you? 

For the Love - Day 11

It's icy here. Just this past week I literally used the entire front end of one of the school's mini-vans to keep myself from flying all over the ice like something you'd otherwise only see in a cartoon.  I took a little comfort from the fact that even the youngest students were doing the "penguin" walk. 

But the danger of ice can pale in comparison to the peril we feel when we feel ourselves falling in an existential way.  Perhaps we didn't get the grade we needed, or the financial aid package, the internship, the graduate position, or the job.  Sometimes the fall we dread - is the breakup, the medical test results ... that phone call late at night ... 

Verse  17 of Psalm 94 sums it up - "If the Lord had not been my help - I would've soon have dwelt in the abode of silence."

There is a way in which God comes close to us when we are faced with what we couldn't imagine facing.  He does steady us.  He does indeed comfort us and make us feel secure.  This doesn't mean that struggle become painless - or we morph into some lab-experiment-gone-wrong kind of freak and are immune to these things.  Instead - God - in ways we could've never before hand even grasped - not with the most eloquent explanations - offers us truth, understanding, insight - and most of all lends meaning to our struggle. 

The very things that threaten to bring us down - in His tender-loving hands - become the stepping stones we use to climb closer to Him still.