Remember our story yesterday about Jesus stopping to help a hurting woman?  It wasn’t just about interruptions.  After helping the woman who interrupted his travels, Jesus carried on his way towards Jairus’ house, since he’d asked Jesus to heal his daughter.  It turns out that Jairus’daughter had died in the meantime, but Jesus kept going, and arrived at her bedside and raised her from the dead.  That’s the true point of this story – the resurrection from the dead is what we’re heading toward – ultimate goal.  He gives us a glimpse in this story, showing us that our death will not be the end of us, but that Jesus offers to simply wake us up in his kingdom.  It’s a matter of whether we want to join that party.

Jesus said the main thing was loving God, loving neighbours.  The confidence to live that way, with all its sacrifices in this world, all flows from Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.  It is our resurrection from being dead to sin now, and the physical death still to come.

We can be distracted by other things – even good things – and lose perspective.  We can tell ourselves things will settle down, or that more will be enough, or that everybody lives like this.

But these are distractions.  We can only do so many things well – why not make our specialty what God says is most important?  We’ll have to slow down.

John Ortberg – Love and hurry are fundamentally incompatible.  Love always takes time, and time is the one thing hurried people don’t have.”

Think of the difference between good doctor and bad doctor from a patient’s perspective.  It often has to do with perception of being hurried – does the doctor seem to listen and care?  I know someone who visited the doctor recently, and waiting for an hour in the exam room listening to him talk on the phone about golf, then she heard him tell a drug rep he was extremely busy.  She knew it was a lie, and that he didn’t care about her as a person.

We don’t want to be like that with our neighbours!

Question: What good things might be keeping you from the “main thing” of loving God, who calls you to your neighbours?

We meet for coffee every Wednesday night at Starbucks in the Chapters Store in Ajax, in Durham Region just East of Toronto.  Maybe we’ll see you there?

Ryan Sim - September 19, 2013

Thursday - Act On It - Strangers to Neighbours

Yesterday I asked you to complete a neighbourhood grid. How did it go? This grid has been completed by people all over North America, and the creators report that about 10% of people can fill in every name on the grid. About 3% can write down one fact about each neighbour, and less than 1% can write something of depth about every neighbour. Yes, Jesus says love your enemies, and we should work towards this. Unfortunately, we can’t start there very easily, since if we aim for everything, we usually hit nothing. Trying to be neighbours with everybody all at once often means we’re neighbours with nobody. We need to start somewhere. In our culture, we often experience the opposite problem as Jesus’ original hearers. They lived in a tightknit community with strong traditions and bonds. Loving their similar neighbours came naturally, but loving enemies did not. Their definition needed broadening. In contract, our culture can make this story too metaphorical and remote. We don’t regularly see wounded enemies laying on the road, and can tell ourselves, “if I do, I live in a country with universal health care so I can leave it to the profesionals.” For us, our definition of loving neighbour can start out too broad, and needs narrowing so we can learn to truly love, and not just write people off. There are two ways we will start off easy. We’ll start with our actual neighbourhood or cubicle cluster. Secondly, if love sounds mushy or weird, we can just start with learning names, and then we can figure it out from there. Challenge: For this week, work on learning all the names possible in your grid. If you don’t know them all, just go knock on their door and ask. You may find out they forgot your name, too! Have you completed the neighbourhood grid yet? If not, click here: https://www.redeemthecommute.com/2013/09/11/strangerstoneighbours

From Series: "Won't You Be My Neighbour?"

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