May 06, 2004
Jesus Got A New Set Of Eyes
According to PDL, in China, they welcome new believers by saying, "Jesus now has a new pair of eyes to see with, new ears to listen with, new hands to help with, and a new heart to love others with."
That's beautiful. Love the points this chapter brings up. At the moment we were saved, we were not jettisoned into Heaven to spend the rest of eternity with God and the angels. No, we stayed right here. Why is that? Is there some purpose we're supposed to fulfill? Why doesn't God just impose His salvation will on everyone on the planet and be done with it? Why does He leave the job of harvesting to us? What role do we play actually? If I'm a Calvinist, does that mean I can just sit around and let God do everything? Why am I here?
One interesting point matches a conversation we were having in the marriage group that we have in our home. We are studying "Handling Stress in Your Marriage," and we were looking at the story of Mary and Martha when Jesus was at their house. You remember the story: Martha tells Jesus 'to do something and make Mary help her' do all the serving. Jesus told Martha that Mary was doing the right thing -- sitting at His feet and soaking up His Words. It's always easy to belittle Martha for this story; but the book we were reading tried to bring up the good points about what she was doing, too. It wasn't easy to respect Martha for serving the Son of God, since she gets the rebuke she does. But a point brought up in today's chapter sheds light on this.
Jesus was at Peter's house, apparently, and Pete's mom was sick. Jesus healed her and ... what did she do? Sit around at His feet, worshiping Him and thanking Him for the healing? No. She immediately got up and started serving Jesus. Interesting. So this faith journey we have is not all about soaking up knowledge and the teachings of Christ. Certainly there's a place for meditation and rest; but there's also a call to serve God -- which most often finds its form in serving people. Nice.
I love the list of misfits at the end of the chapter. People God used in great ways were messed up: Elijah was suicidal; Paul had health problems; David had an affair; Moses stuttered; and (my favorite) Samson was codependent. What's our excuse for not serving? These folks had pretty good excuses and most all of them tried using their excuses not to serve, but served any way. What a good example.
Watched a new arrival DVD this morning, The Art of Liveby Queensryche. At the end of the show, the screen goes black for a good 5-10 seconds (maybe longer) and then the band comes out for two encores -- "Comfortably Numb" and "Won't Get Fooled Again." They are joined by their tourmates Dream Theater for the two songs. The great David Gilmour solos of Comfortably Numb are shared by 4 or 5 guitarists, and the end of the song improvises with 3 guitarists going after it to good effect. This was my entertainment for the morning before school. My youngest daughter's was to play a Barbie dress-up game online.