Dear Luke,
I understand. I hope you know that I understand your
frustrations. This is not an easy thing
that you have set out to discern, and Jesus does not always make it easy for us
to understand him. Some of the questions
you ask are the same questions I ask when I gather with other Christians. I do not believe that following Jesus
requires stunting intellectual growth or giving up on any opportunities to ask
questions of what we believe. I have
found answers to many of your questions, and those to which I have not found
answers I have come to peace with not having complete knowledge. I trust Jesus, which means that I am more
like a child—when he is doing or saying something I cannot grasp, I am willing
to let it lie, to trust that he is working towards something good. I will ask plenty of questions, and I will
doggedly seek answers to some of them, but others I let go, trusting him.
As to what you perceive as threats,
I hear them as urgent pleas for people to turn to God. It is two sides of the same coin, but as one
who has found peace with God, I am prone to be more lenient. I believe that life is a perilous thing, that
just as that tower crashed and claimed eighteen lives, our own lives can end
today or tomorrow without warning. We do
not have any guarantees, and Jesus is reminding us of this by saying that we
need to choose to follow God while we still can, because there may not be a
tomorrow for us to use as a day of decision.
I, too, am flummoxed by Jesus’ lack of a return, for I thought he would
be back by now, and while I accept that it may be some time yet before he
returns, I do know that I am called to be ready, called to have repented and
turned my life over to Christ, so that whether he returns or I die, I am
prepared to meet him as a sinner who has repented. Maybe Jesus is trying to strike fear into
people, but the thought of eternal separation from God is, to me, a pretty
scary thing, so perhaps some fear is justified.
I will not try and answer all of
your questions, Luke, but I will be honest about what I believe. I believe that Jesus is the only way to peace
with God, and I don’t want to dance politely around your sensitivities and not
claim that exclusivity. I hope you
respect that. I will do my best to
respect you and your search, and to let you dwell in the uncertainty that comes
with any honest search of a difficult topic, but I also want you to be clear
about where I stand.
I have news of yet another
healing. It is a controversial one, if
you will believe it, for some were very upset and who and when Jesus chose to
heal. In this case, Jesus was teaching
in a synagogue one Sabbath when a woman who had been crippled by a spirit for
eighteen long years appeared before him.
It’s a dramatic scene to picture, the woman bent over before Jesus, his
compassionate eyes turned towards her, and the crowd waiting to see what would
happen. They didn’t have to wait long,
because Jesus’ hands soon found her, and he declared her free as she stood
straight up, praising God for a healing she had waited almost two decades
for. I am sure the gasp of the crowd was
lost in her shouts of praise, but even those who had seen him heal others must
have been amazed by what he had done.
All, however, were not making a
joyful noise! The synagogue’s leader
chose the path of indignation, exhorting the crowd to be angered because Jesus
had healed this woman on the Sabbath day, rather than using one of the other
six days of the week as the time to do this work. I imagine the plea to the crowd fell upon
some deaf ears, but perhaps some were talking themselves into this man’s line
of thinking when Jesus rebuked him.
Hypocrites! Oxen and donkeys you are not afraid to lead
to the water to drink on the Sabbath, and yet this woman, a daughter of Abraham,
is to spend another day as Satan’s prisoner because it is the Sabbath? Should she not be freed?
Jesus’ opponents had no answer to
him, and they were filled with shame at what they had said, a shame made even
deeper as the crowd continued to rejoice because of the things he was
doing. The few opponents were so
insistent on resisted his every action, but they could not compete with his
vast intellect and ability to overwhelm their petty arguments against his
compassionate acts.
It’s easy to look at these acts as
small feats, little victories against the forces that oppose Jesus. But Jesus teaches about how God works through
small things. He compares God’s kingdom
to a tiny mustard seed, planted in the ground, that grows into a tree whose
branches are filled with nests and birds.
He also uses yeast, something tiny that a woman might knead into a large
amount of flour that has an effect that far outweighs its size.
Jesus is teaching us that God’s
kingdom may not always appear dramatic at first, and we may not grasp the whole
truth at the beginning, but it grows and grows into something far greater than
we might expect if we let God do a mighty work.
We may not understand how it all works, but Jesus assures us that it
does indeed work if we trust in God.
I hope this helps you in your
anxiety and frustration, Luke. May you
come to peace with your questions, and may you trust God to turn a small seed
into something marvelous in your life.
Sincerely,
Theophilus
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