Grief. Grief is the word that I can't get over today. Jesus tells his disciples he will be delivered to human hands and he will be killed. But get this, he also says that within 3 days he will come back to life. HE WILL COME BACK TO LIFE!!!!!! Upon hearing this his followers are not in awe. They are not excited. They don't look at him and say, "Dude, you're crazy!" Instead they are filled with grief. Why grief? All these guys hear is death, and it hits them so hard, I do not think they hear and understand the rest of his prophecy.
It is sad how incapable we can be of seeing past the end of our own nose. Sometimes the pain or confusion or fear or discomfort or (insert feeling here) is all consuming in our lives. I'm not trying to minimize pain or fear. They are very real. But I wonder how often I allow my feelings to overtake me, so much so, that I don't see the rest of the story; the rest of the promise. God surely has purpose for my life (whether I have 50 years or 50 minutes left of it). Am I living in my own mind or in God's promise Am I filled with grief, afraid of the cost to me, worried about what might happen if..., or do I live trusting in the saviour who lived and died and rose again? Do I see the promise? Do I trust it; I mean really trust Jesus? Or have the hardest parts of my story kept me from seeing the best part of it? Lord show me your plan and help me trust your promises.
Thanks for this insight. I was also struck by the same concept of being so caught up in our own existence that we miss the sheer awe and power of God, and the mind-blowing work that Christ can do in our lives. I missed this angle of "only seeing the grief" in Jesus' statement about being killed and then RISING FROM THE DEAD however, so it was awesome to hear your view. What struck me was how the disciples seemed only truly in awe of Jesus when they were taken on the mountain and shown his true glory and face of God, but failed to see past their own lives "off the mountain." They even walked side by side physically with Jesus and missed the power and awe. So much so that they failed to cast out demons because they tried to do it themselves, rather than utilize that very power of Christ which was so readily available to them. And Jesus is like, "Come on already! What do I have to do and how long do I have to stay for you to get it?!" I found this ringing all too loudly in my own life as I read this passage. Jesus wants to move moutains in my life, and all I want to do is move the same pile of dirt back and forth. Did you hear me?? JESUS, the Son of God, loves me so much that he died for ME, and wants to move mountains in MY life! And all he asks of me is to accept that love and trust him. I don't have to be perfect, and I am certainly going to make mistakes, and I don't even have to shoulder an ounce of the burden. All I have to do is trust him enough to get out of the boat! Stop only seeing the gief, and the stuff I can't fix on my own, and start seeing Jesus, who has already defeated the crap I still want to fight. Why the heck am I fixated on the baggage of life in this world, when Jesus is standing there with his hand extended saying, "Dude, just give me the baggage and let me show you happiness beyond your wildest dreams."
ReplyDeleteMaybe I got a little off track there and rambled, but it is truly amazing what we can get out of a passage in the Bible if we are open to listening. And your blog even showed me more than I got myself, so thank you God for speaking to us through your Word!
-Chris Cowden
The part that jumped out to me was exactly what jumped out to you Rob. THEY NEVER EVEN HEARD JESUS say he was going to rise from the dead! It's like he didn't even say it! They were SO fixated on their own "stuff"...their own grief, that they only heard the part that FED that feeling. Jesus must have just shook his head.
ReplyDeleteGrief, pain, hurt, whatever you insert here can bring with it a great load self-absorption along with it, where we truly cannot see past our own nose. In the meantime God has some wonderful things for us to do with our life experience if we could just hear the WHOLE message, and see the WHOLE message in our experiences. Don't know if that made sense. Haven't had my coffee yet...