Wednesday, August 31, 2022
           (click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Surviving suffering
At sunset, all who had people sick with various diseases brought them to Jesus. At daybreak, Jesus left and went to a deserted place. The crowds went looking for him.
Yesterday had been a big wonderful thing of a day, and Jesus slept soundly. He woke early and went as was his habit to pray. Pray, yes, the prayers of his people, but also the prayers reserved for the communion he held with his Father, with Yahweh, the God who had no name except I AM, the God who ordained and anointed the Israelites, the nation named after one of their own, destined to become His Own People.
Simon’s mother-in-law, his wife’s “Eema,” was no longer ill and in danger of death. Her pneumonia had retreated at the touch of Jesus. Of course Eema could not keep this to herself, and many other matrons and fathers and children sought the sight of Jesus, along with the healing from his hands. Demons awakened in the minds of their hosts and named Jesus, “You are the Son of God!”
Everywhere he turned there was another one of God’s children, crying out for help. So much sorrow, so much pain, so much need, and Jesus’ heart broke open over and over, to receive the power his Father reserved for him and immediately pour that power out, like refreshment, like baptism, like a waterfall of healing, on all who asked.
And then it was night, and he was exhausted, and he slept.
Now, at the break of dawn, it was time to leave, though everyone wanted him to stay. There were so many more. Everyone knew someone a little further into the country who needed Jesus. They would bring them to him. Couldn’t he wait just a little while?
But he said to them, “To the other towns also I must proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God, because for this purpose I was sent.”
Jesus’ life. Fuller than full. In just this single chapter of Luke Jesus spent 40 days in the desert, fasting and resisting temptations from the devil. Going straight from the desert into his hometown Nazareth, he opened the scroll of Isaiah 61 and announced that God had chosen him “to proclaim the good news to the poor and set the oppressed free.” He insulted the people in the synagogue at Nazareth and they tried to throw him off a cliff, but he “walked right through the crowd.”
Now he is in Capernaum for the next Big Wonderful Day. And in every way the people of Israel are alive with hope. The Messiah is walking among them? Is the day of their freedom at last at hand? Where is this man? We must go and find him. Get the children together, pack a picnic. Let’s go!
Walking in the prairie is like stepping into your soul.
Able to take a deep breath, you take it.
Able to stop and be surrounded, you savor.
Beauty, diversity, full of life and ever-changing.
Interconnected and living its purpose – to be what it is.
Tall-grass prairie, if I could be you, I would.
Live your life in me, I pray.
Live your life in me. – Clarence Heller
We have been following Jesus ever since. Highways, biways, prairie schooners and sailing ships, listening between breaths for the sound of Jesus’ walking beside us, eating beside us, breathing in the sea air beside us. His healing transcends our bodies and our minds and transforms our spirit. In his presence we are whole.
Just a month ago I drove south through Tyler into Texas and back to Austin. Just a month. In just those last few days … healing and pain, learning, loss, a birthday and anniversary … time flies. Chronos after the fact becomes Kairos, filled with memories of the presence of Jesus and the touch of Holy Spirit.
And suddenly our son is injured in an accident, his plans sidetracked, our joy and hopes for him turned a little upside down. The Big Wonderful Day of Jesus does not recede, however; it reaches in and takes hold in a very different way, following after the ways of suffering and patience. Jesus had plenty to say about this kind of day.
Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple (Luke 14:27).
I think you only know what Jesus meant when it happens to you.
What will happen next, in our son’s life, in Margaret’s life, in mine? How will Jasper and Miles and Aly and Jack live as they grow? Memorizing Bible verses? Living them out? Waiting with patience in the midst of the pain of others or themselves?
Neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who causes the growth.
We are all one river, we are all one sea. And as Jesus knew better than anyone, that sea is roiling with anguish as well as joy.
(1 Corinthians 3, Psalm 33, Luke 4)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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