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 - May 13, 2013

Monday - A New Idea - Forgiveness

Sermon on the Mount

On the news last week, we heard about how no one wants the body of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the deceased suspect in the Boston Marathon Bombings. No cemetery seems to want the body, and the funeral director is under attack for his involvement. You can hear the anger in people’s voices. They cannot forgive this man for trying to kill them, their friends, their families. One man said, “dump him off a boat like Bin Laden”. Maybe it would be different if he was alive, and people could tell him off, see him stand trial, explain his deeds, and see him convicted and put away. But they can’t – he’s dead, and so they can only try to deny him a proper burial – many seem unable to forgive this man. A few columns and blogs here and there have spoken of forgiveness. You can tell it’s hard – more often than not you can tell they wish they could hate, but are held back by something, someone, who compels them to go against their baser instincts and forgive someone who they want to hate. Question: Can you forgive someone who won’t apologize, or forgive you? Why or why not? One example of a blog advocating forgiveness: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-martha-r-jacobs/is-a-person-bad-or-does-a-person-choose-to-do-bad-things_b_3200740.html

From Series: "Sermon on the Mount"

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