Wednesday, February 25, 2015
Today’s Scripture Reading: Luke 10:1-12
“But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.’" (Luke 10:10-11)
“If we're going to impact our world in the name of Jesus, it will be because people like you and me took action in the power of the Spirit. Ever since the mission and ministry of Jesus, God has never stopped calling for a movement of "Little Jesuses" to follow him into the world and unleash the remarkable redemptive genius that lies in the very message we carry. Given the situation of the Church in the West, much will now depend on whether we are willing to break out of a stifling herd instinct and find God again in the context of the advancing kingdom of God.” ― Alan Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church
Sometimes the Kingdom of God may come near to us and we miss its appearance. Something great comes our way and we fail to recognize it. We may be looking for the extraordinary miracles of healing, power, and wonder, when the reality is that the extraordinary often comes wrapped in the ordinary, in the small, seemingly simple things.
In 1863, a newspaper editor from Harrisburg, PA only 35 miles away from Gettysburg, heard Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, which was not even the main speech of the day’s activities, when the president was to make only a few brief remarks. The next day the editor wrote in his paper: "We pass over the silly remarks of the President; for the credit of the nation, we are willing that the veil of oblivion shall be dropped over them and that they should no more be repeated or thought of."
One of the worst things that can be said of people is that greatness passed them by, and they did not recognize it. Yet in the words of Henry David Thoreau:
The morning wind forever blows;
The poem of creation is uninterrupted;
But few are the ears that hear it.
Every one of us at some moment in our lives have felt that morning wind blowing by; every one of us has been partakers in that uninterrupted poem of creation. Yet how many of our ears have really heard it; how many of our eyes have truly seen it? What is preventing us from seeing the kingdom of God and letting it into our lives? Are we relying on seeing only the extraordinary miracles of God’s presence in our lives and missing the wonders, we can behold in the simply ordinary things of life, the seemingly insignificant moments.
At times, we let the kingdom pass us by because the wonder of its greatness threatens our own sense of importance. We so enjoy ruling our own private kingdoms, no matter how small and insignificant they may appear to others. While pre-occupied with our own accomplishments, we fail to witness the wonders of God unfolding before us and they remain just out of our reach because we do not wish to let go even for a moment what we feel is more important.
In the 1930s, the two greatest physicists of the modern era and the two architects of the golden age of theoretical physics, Paul Dirac and Werner Heisenburg, traveled around the world. They showed up unannounced at the University of Hawaii, and the president of the university told the rest of the story a few months later:
A couple of guys turned up, said they were Heisenburg and Dirac and wanted to give a lecture; but I saw through them and had them shown out. Faced with a chance to experience even a tiny glimpse into the vast complexities of the universe through the brilliance of two gifted men, this bureaucrat confidently announced, "I saw through them." When we insist too loudly and too proudly that we know best, then greatness passes by.
In verse 2, Jesus tells us, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” By calling us out to join the harvest, God is calling us to something wonderful, something which will change and alter our lives forever. We are called to offer our communities “peace” or shalom, which in the way Jesus uses it here means to offer them salvation. Jesus wants to send us out to share the Kingdom, telling jus, “Whatever house you enter, first say, 'Peace to this house!'” (v. 5) Some will accept your peace and other will not, but regardless of the response we will experience the nearest of the Kingdom. We need to remain open to God’s presence and not allow the Kingdom to pass us by.
Ordinary people wondering how on earth to be faithful Christians have this rather simple prescription: Focus on Jesus. Listen to his teachings, examine his life, notice his relationships, hear his questions and follow his invitation to be his disciple.
Jesus wanted ordinary people who could take an assignment and do it extraordinarily well. He chose these men, not for what they were, but for what they would be capable of becoming under his direction and power. When the Lord calls us to serve, we must not think we have nothing to offer. The Lord takes what ordinary people, like us, can offer and uses it for greatness in his kingdom. Do you believe that God wants to work through and in you for his glory?
Today’s Lectionary Readings
Morning: Psalms 5; 147:1–11
Evening: Psalms 27; 51
Deuteronomy 9:13–21
Hebrews 3:12–19
John 2:23–3:15
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