"But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.
– Matthew 23:13-15
This is a pencil a student had today that literally made me laugh historically. What a good day.
‘I can't take any more of this. I'm at the end of my tether.' You know what it is like, don't you, listening to a case that seems hopeless? While you are hearing with sympathy, part of you is wondering, ‘What can I say?' The mother on my phone did not know what sort of help she needed, only that she was at the end of her resources. The household had become unliveable. When she phoned it was not to ask for specific help, but rather wanted to know, ‘Is there any way we can survive?' She said, ‘We cannot hold this anger and frustration anymore.'
Jesus spent days moving among the sick, the depressed and the demonic, who were drawn to him because they thought, ‘Here is somebody who will listen to my bad news; he will not just walk away.' Most of the miseries we listen to are beyond our power to change, but when we listen to friends with compassion, and avoid blaming, moralising or pushing solutions, we contain their miseries, share their burdens, take in their despair, and metabolise it into hope.
"Before the Web, there was just one guy running around saying 'I KNOW!'" – Robin Williams, ad-libbing, after taking the stage during a technical problem in the BBC World Debate
"Western science is a major response to minor needs." – Wade Davis quoting Mattheiu Ricard
"Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink?"
The other day I ran out of gas on the highway. I am such a dude. Come on, you guys all know what I am talking about… when you just know that you can make it to the next exit even though the needle is well below the "E" mark. Yeah, didn't happen. Poor Lindsay. This is the second time she has had to endure my optimism towards the ol' tank.
So, this guy stops and picks us up and drops us off at a gas station. He then insists that we fill up a can and bring it back in his van so that he can take us all the way back to our car. We have a very normal and down to earth conversation with this guy and all in all he spent about twenty some minutes helping us out. It was really nice of him to do this for perfect strangers.
During one point in the conversation he said "fuck" in a very normal dialect and it got me thinking about how a few years ago I would have been concerned for this guys soul in the midst of his kindness towards us. I have been thinking recently a lot about how much it is possible that people who know Jesus very probably don't necessarily know that they do.
Conversely, I think it is scarily possible that those who are confident that the know Jesus very possibly do not at all. One group said when didn't we see you hungry and one group asks when did we? I am beginning to ask myself the question a lot lately… when have I seen Jesus and feed him, clothed him, quenched his thirst? Do I even know any of the "least of these"?
I fear the honest answer to this question, but I hope that it will not stop me from asking it not only mentally or verbally, but with action. I hope that I will find the deep satisfying joy of doing so and avoid the dark, lonely, self-absorbed consequences of not.
What a great idea! Wow, I never heard that message in all my years in church. Thanks, Parma Baptist.
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNonhq15wq0&rel=1]
“If the truth is that God doesn’t play favorites, if the turth is that God is not a racist, if the truth is that land theft and slave labor are wrong even (especially!) when done by people who call themselves Christians, if the truth is that all human beings are created in the image of God and deserve to be treated with equal dignity, even sanctity – then we must face the injustices of our past and seek justice for everybody everywhere. That is the only way that the world of tomorrow will be a better place, and it is the only way to live by the truth.”
