Becoming Healthy
Commentary
It seems everybody knows about Victor Hugo’s greatest novel, even if few have actually read it. He called his masterpiece, Les Miserables, and said that it was “a religious work.” So it is. The story echoes the gospel message at nearly every turn.
The main character, Jean Valjean, has been beaten hard by the cruel twists of fate. He has seen the sham of hypocrisy on all sides. So he casts the name of the Lord to the ground like a curse. What does God know of him, and what does it matter?
Imprisoned for stealing bread to feed his family and resentenced by the vindictive will of his jailer, Jean Valjean finally manages to escape. On his first night of freedom, he stays with a bishop, who treats him well. But behind Jean Valjean’s thankful mask is the cunning face of a thief, for the bishop has many valuables.
In the early morning hours, Jean Valjean steals away with some silver plates. And when his suspicious appearance brings him under arrest, he is forced to face the bishop again, charged with new crimes.
Then the miracle of grace occurs. For in Jean Valjean’s eyes, the bishop sees something that begs forgive ness and hopes for mercy. Instead of taking revenge, the bishop declares that the silver dishes were a gift to Jean Valjean. In fact, he says Jean Valjean forgot to take the two silver candlesticks he had also given him.
In an instant, the bishop declares Jean Valjean innocent and gives him back his life. But with this gift of forgiveness, he commissions Jean Valjean to bring Christ to others. The rest of Jean Valjean’s life becomes a testimony of one who is made new in the grace of divine love. He becomes what he was meant to be.
Not only that, but Jean Valjean spends the rest of his life helping his young charge, Cosette, find love and a good marriage. The redeemed becomes the redeemer. The one who has seen the light becomes the light of life for others.
While the parallels can only be drawn so far, there are powerful images that get repeated when trying to figure out the deep meanings of life. All of our scripture passages for today reflect those changes and transformations.
Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
Although not systematically detailed, a clear theology of the Sinai Covenant pervades these accounts. First, there is absolute certainty throughout these writings that Yahweh is sovereign over all the nations. This is why Cyrus sent the Jews back to Jerusalem, even though he may not have fully understood the divine leading. Nehemiah consistently journaled that Yahweh was in complete control of peoples and nations. Second, within Yahweh’s overall international dominion, Yahweh continued to have a special relationship with Abraham’s family, the people of Israel. Because of this, however small the remnant community of returning exiles might have been, it was supposed to consider itself both privileged and responsible. It would not be destroyed, since Yahweh was faithful to the covenant promises made generations before. At the same time, Yahweh’s faithfulness should not be misconstrued by the surviving generation as a free ride through life or as some automatic dispenser of blessings, regardless of their behaviors or activities. They were to model what it meant to live before Yahweh, and as Yahweh’s people, and in Yahweh’s neighborhood. They were people of the Sinai Covenant, who shared the mission of Yahweh to re-stake a claim of influence in the human arena, and who must give witness to the divine character and intentions.
Third, the recent exile to Babylon was a result of Israel’s covenant breaking. When the people failed in their obedience to the stipulations of the Sinai Covenant and lost their fidelity with their Suzerain, the curses of the covenant were activated, and they were removed from the promised land as punishment. Thus, the exile was a chastening and cleansing event. Even the land itself had to recover the sabbath years, which had been neglected earlier.
Fourth, this miraculous restoration to the land of promise demanded deeper covenant response and faithfulness. The nation must learn from its mistakes; next time, Yahweh might not be as gracious in redeeming them from foreign deportation or renewing their place of stability in the land of promise. For this reason, Ezra and Nehemiah led a massive and comprehensive covenant renewal ceremony (Nehemiah 8-10), designed to inaugurate a new era of covenant obedience and divine blessing.
1 Corinthians 12:12-31a
In 1968, John Kinch published an article explaining the links between self -perceptions and behaviors. The year prior, he and his psychology graduate students performed a social experiment that would not be allowed today. Five graduate students in psychology, wrote Kinch, created a rather bizarre experiment. They were part of the “in” crowd at the university. They moved in the right circles. They dressed the right way, had the right friends, and went to the right places.
They decided to focus their attention on one young woman who wasn’t in that circle. She was an outsider, a nobody, a person who didn’t count, at least to them. Normally they wouldn’t even talk with her. Yet, for the duration of the experiment, these fellows agreed to treat her like she was one of their crowd, like she was a somebody. They decided to talk with her, to call her up, and to ask her out. They made an agreement that whenever they saw her, they would compliment her and show an interest in her.
After a little while, as they carried out this experiment, something strange began to happen. She became more likable. She became less foreign, less alien.
The first fellow’s date with her was hardly bearable. He had to keep repeating to himself: “She’s beautiful. She’s beautiful. I’ve got to keep telling myself that she’s beautiful.” By the time the third fellow asked her out, however, she had become part of their circle of friends. It was kind of fun being with her. She wasn’t so bad after all. And the fifth fellow never did get to date her because the fourth fellow in line asked her to be his wife.
Now, that may have been a cruel experiment at the beginning, and certainly not something to try again, but isn’t it amazing what can happen when we redraw the circles of our lives? This is what Paul urges as he writes to the Corinthian congregation about “Body Life.”
Wrote Edwin Markham:
He drew a circle that shut me out —
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!
What do I win in the circle of love? I win a sister. I win a brother. And, as Paul notes, the Body of Christ begins to function in healthy ways.
Luke 4:14-21
After my first year in seminary, my home congregation in rural Minnesota asked me to preach on a Sunday morning. Luke’s story of Jesus heading home to Nazareth haunted me in the weeks leading up to the momentous occasion. Who was I to think that I could walk into the worship sanctuary of my boyhood community and suddenly proclaim the Word of God to my parents and their peers, not to mention my friends and classmates who knew me too well to take me seriously?! Would I be pelted with overripe tomatoes and rotten eggs for my efforts at “exhorting” or “proclaiming” or whatever it was that I would try to do from that familiar pulpit? Would I be laughed out of the building before I had even begun, despicable in my over-indulgent earnestness? Or, like happened to the Jesus I pledged to serve, would piles of stones be stacked at the doors, ready for my departing “blessing,” just before lynching?
Well, family and friends back home were kind, not taking a lesson from the murmuring mutterers in Nazareth some twenty centuries earlier. What made things turn so differently for Jesus in his home town? The passage for the day, from Isaiah 61, was marvelous, one of the great testimonies of divine initiative written by the most poetically gifted among the great prophets. Jesus’ message was short and sweet, certainly not preventing folks from getting home before the Sabbath roast was overdone. Even the first responses were strong affirmations of the boy wonder who grew up among us (verse 22). Yet when Jesus added a few explanatory notes, the place exploded with vitriolic bitterness, and mob frenzy strove to end the service with murder (verses 23-30).
These notes about the response of Jesus’ neighbors and friends to his first attempt at preaching help us understand the meaning of this moment. It was not merely a familiar rabbinical student exercising his limited eloquence for a first time with the home town crowd. According to Luke, it was an occasion of incredible divine revelation. Two things, in particular, contributed to its significance. First, there was the text itself. Although written long after Israel’s wilderness beginnings at the foot of Mount Sinai, the word of God that came to the prophet Isaiah was deeply rooted in the Covenant making ceremony that happened back then. Leviticus 25 outlined the greatest of all the festivals that shaped Israel’s calendar. It was the “Year of Jubilee,” a once-in-a-lifetime event when lands would go back to original families, debts would be forgiven, families would be restored, slaves would be freed, and Yahweh would provide enough natural growth from the land that no farming need be done for two years. The whole country could live out a twelve-month party.
Unfortunately, according to the rest of the Old Testament records, the grand “Year of Jubilee” never took place. Purportedly scheduled every fifty years, it was always delayed by circumstances or forgotten by busyness or ignored by consumerism or set aside as inconvenient. By the time of Judah’s exile in 586 B.C., the prophets have begun to talk about the removal of the people from the land as God’s way of making certain that the long neglected “Year of Jubilee” grand Sabbath would finally get its due. If the celebration and rest would not happen with the elect community around, it would happen without them.
The Word of the Lord that came through Isaiah in what we call chapter 61 was a poetic visioning of what things would look like when the “Year of Jubilee” was finally celebrated. The Spirit of God would energize all, and hope and healing and happiness would flood through the settled territories until no need would go unmet, no tear would fall without turning into a smile, no call of hunger would go unanswered by feasting, and no alienation or marginalization would be unaddressed by the best of community-building. One day, someday, maybe Yahweh would come and finally bring in the “Year of Jubilee.”
So when Jesus came home to the synagogue in Nazareth, it was a wonderful thing to hear his voice intone these great promises and prophetic hopes. But the kicker was his short application: “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” It was a declaration that he was bringing in the “Year of Jubilee.” That was either a gross overstatement, since no human had the ability to make such a transcendent event happen, or a mighty egoistical sacrilegious boast, delusional in making Jesus out to be God! Either way, the nice text was given a bad twist in a crudely exaggerated sermonic application. So they would think, not knowing what we believe about Jesus and his work, from out vantage point.
Second, another rub came in the way that the text from Isaiah was cut short by Jesus, when he read it. He failed to read the last clause, “and the day of vengeance of our God.” This phrase was typically used as part of the explanation why the “Year of Jubilee” had not been and could not be celebrated. Other nations prevented it. There was always a political threat which kept the people of God from following through on the magic of these promised months, making it impossible for Israel/Judah to live out the pleasure of this festival. Only if God would come with vengeance and strike our enemies down in disgrace and disaster would we be able to truly enjoy the “Year of Jubilee.”
But when Jesus simply declared that the year had come in himself, and that no punishments were to be meted out on the Romans, the whole matter took a new spin that left the cherished prejudices panting for something Jesus wouldn’t give. God was bringing the blessings of the messianic age through Jesus without necessarily pounding Jewish enemies to pulp. The savory lip-smacking of vengeance was removed from the equation, and now somebody had to pay. Let’s take it out on Jesus! And though this moment of mob hysteria may have seemed like an anomaly, in the months ahead it would become the very movement that would finally bring about Jesus’ excruciating execution. Which, in turn, would actually usher in the very things that Jesus was preaching about. How ironic!
Application
Ibn Saud was the first modern king of Saudi Arabia. He lived during the early half of the twentieth century, and people in the East still talk about his wisdom. One day a widow came to him in a rage. She wanted justice against the old man who had killed her husband. The story was strange: her husband had been walking under a palm tree when the other man, up in the tree gathering dates, slipped and fell on him. Her husband eventually died from internal injuries received in that accident.
Ibn Saud checked the matter out and found it was true. He asked the widow, “What compensation will you take?”
He thought that she would want a pension in order to care for her family in the years ahead. But instead she asked that her husband’s unintentional killer be put to death. She wanted the other man to die. She drew a circle that shut him out.
Ibn Saud knew that her family needed support, not revenge. So quietly and calmly, he tried to talk her out of it. But she was adamant. Her husband was dead, and his slayer must die, too. There was no way to get her off her singular track.
When he saw that his coaxing was useless, Ibn Saud tried one more thing. He agreed to the death penalty, but he decreed that it be carried out in a very specific way. The man who killed her husband, he said, would be bound and set under a palm tree. Then the widow herself must climb the tree and throw herself down on the man, killing him.
“But I might also die”! she protested.
“Yes,” said the king, “but hasn’t your thirst for revenge already destroyed your soul? Aren’t you just as dead as you wish him to be?”
The widow relented. She let the man live, and she received back her own life.
In much the same way, today’s passages speak of grace and healing, often in the context of alienation and separation. When we look at one another through jealous eyes, or with attitudes of judgment, we reduce our worlds to disease and death. But if the gospel of grace and reconciliation and hope pervades our atmosphere, life begins anew.
Alternative Application (Luke 4:14-21)
How would you or I have responded to the first sermon of Jesus? A dear friend once explained it like this: in a dream he saw a marvelous apparatus of yellow silk billowing in the breezes next to a cliff. It was a transportation device of some kind, though he couldn’t see either engines or supports. Like a magical tent, it floated in space.
Inside was a man whose face seemed so familiar and friendly that my friend knew immediately this was an intimate acquaintance. However, he could not seem to remember how they were associated, nor the man’s name. The man, with a smile of warmth, invited him to step off the cliff into the contrivance and be carried on a delightful journey in the yellow tent.
But my friend was so intrigued by the device itself that he wanted to try it on his own. He wanted to pilot the magical airship. So when he entered the craft he fought the man for control and pushed him out onto the cliff. Unfortunately, just as my friend felt the power of flight swell in his commanding grasp, the entire yellow tent began to collapse in on itself, and plummet to disaster below. No matter what he did, my friend could not make the “machine” fly. He cried out for help, and suddenly the man he had pushed out reappeared at his side. In that exact moment the airship began to billow and slow its freefall. Soon they were soaring together.
Without a further thought, my friend knew that the strangely familiar man was Jesus. He also knew why Jesus said to him, “Don’t you know that the power to fly is not found in the ‘machine’ nor in your skills as a pilot but in me?”
None of us begins to soar in life until we meet Jesus. As the whole Bible declares, it is all about Jesus.
The main character, Jean Valjean, has been beaten hard by the cruel twists of fate. He has seen the sham of hypocrisy on all sides. So he casts the name of the Lord to the ground like a curse. What does God know of him, and what does it matter?
Imprisoned for stealing bread to feed his family and resentenced by the vindictive will of his jailer, Jean Valjean finally manages to escape. On his first night of freedom, he stays with a bishop, who treats him well. But behind Jean Valjean’s thankful mask is the cunning face of a thief, for the bishop has many valuables.
In the early morning hours, Jean Valjean steals away with some silver plates. And when his suspicious appearance brings him under arrest, he is forced to face the bishop again, charged with new crimes.
Then the miracle of grace occurs. For in Jean Valjean’s eyes, the bishop sees something that begs forgive ness and hopes for mercy. Instead of taking revenge, the bishop declares that the silver dishes were a gift to Jean Valjean. In fact, he says Jean Valjean forgot to take the two silver candlesticks he had also given him.
In an instant, the bishop declares Jean Valjean innocent and gives him back his life. But with this gift of forgiveness, he commissions Jean Valjean to bring Christ to others. The rest of Jean Valjean’s life becomes a testimony of one who is made new in the grace of divine love. He becomes what he was meant to be.
Not only that, but Jean Valjean spends the rest of his life helping his young charge, Cosette, find love and a good marriage. The redeemed becomes the redeemer. The one who has seen the light becomes the light of life for others.
While the parallels can only be drawn so far, there are powerful images that get repeated when trying to figure out the deep meanings of life. All of our scripture passages for today reflect those changes and transformations.
Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
Although not systematically detailed, a clear theology of the Sinai Covenant pervades these accounts. First, there is absolute certainty throughout these writings that Yahweh is sovereign over all the nations. This is why Cyrus sent the Jews back to Jerusalem, even though he may not have fully understood the divine leading. Nehemiah consistently journaled that Yahweh was in complete control of peoples and nations. Second, within Yahweh’s overall international dominion, Yahweh continued to have a special relationship with Abraham’s family, the people of Israel. Because of this, however small the remnant community of returning exiles might have been, it was supposed to consider itself both privileged and responsible. It would not be destroyed, since Yahweh was faithful to the covenant promises made generations before. At the same time, Yahweh’s faithfulness should not be misconstrued by the surviving generation as a free ride through life or as some automatic dispenser of blessings, regardless of their behaviors or activities. They were to model what it meant to live before Yahweh, and as Yahweh’s people, and in Yahweh’s neighborhood. They were people of the Sinai Covenant, who shared the mission of Yahweh to re-stake a claim of influence in the human arena, and who must give witness to the divine character and intentions.
Third, the recent exile to Babylon was a result of Israel’s covenant breaking. When the people failed in their obedience to the stipulations of the Sinai Covenant and lost their fidelity with their Suzerain, the curses of the covenant were activated, and they were removed from the promised land as punishment. Thus, the exile was a chastening and cleansing event. Even the land itself had to recover the sabbath years, which had been neglected earlier.
Fourth, this miraculous restoration to the land of promise demanded deeper covenant response and faithfulness. The nation must learn from its mistakes; next time, Yahweh might not be as gracious in redeeming them from foreign deportation or renewing their place of stability in the land of promise. For this reason, Ezra and Nehemiah led a massive and comprehensive covenant renewal ceremony (Nehemiah 8-10), designed to inaugurate a new era of covenant obedience and divine blessing.
1 Corinthians 12:12-31a
In 1968, John Kinch published an article explaining the links between self -perceptions and behaviors. The year prior, he and his psychology graduate students performed a social experiment that would not be allowed today. Five graduate students in psychology, wrote Kinch, created a rather bizarre experiment. They were part of the “in” crowd at the university. They moved in the right circles. They dressed the right way, had the right friends, and went to the right places.
They decided to focus their attention on one young woman who wasn’t in that circle. She was an outsider, a nobody, a person who didn’t count, at least to them. Normally they wouldn’t even talk with her. Yet, for the duration of the experiment, these fellows agreed to treat her like she was one of their crowd, like she was a somebody. They decided to talk with her, to call her up, and to ask her out. They made an agreement that whenever they saw her, they would compliment her and show an interest in her.
After a little while, as they carried out this experiment, something strange began to happen. She became more likable. She became less foreign, less alien.
The first fellow’s date with her was hardly bearable. He had to keep repeating to himself: “She’s beautiful. She’s beautiful. I’ve got to keep telling myself that she’s beautiful.” By the time the third fellow asked her out, however, she had become part of their circle of friends. It was kind of fun being with her. She wasn’t so bad after all. And the fifth fellow never did get to date her because the fourth fellow in line asked her to be his wife.
Now, that may have been a cruel experiment at the beginning, and certainly not something to try again, but isn’t it amazing what can happen when we redraw the circles of our lives? This is what Paul urges as he writes to the Corinthian congregation about “Body Life.”
Wrote Edwin Markham:
He drew a circle that shut me out —
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!
What do I win in the circle of love? I win a sister. I win a brother. And, as Paul notes, the Body of Christ begins to function in healthy ways.
Luke 4:14-21
After my first year in seminary, my home congregation in rural Minnesota asked me to preach on a Sunday morning. Luke’s story of Jesus heading home to Nazareth haunted me in the weeks leading up to the momentous occasion. Who was I to think that I could walk into the worship sanctuary of my boyhood community and suddenly proclaim the Word of God to my parents and their peers, not to mention my friends and classmates who knew me too well to take me seriously?! Would I be pelted with overripe tomatoes and rotten eggs for my efforts at “exhorting” or “proclaiming” or whatever it was that I would try to do from that familiar pulpit? Would I be laughed out of the building before I had even begun, despicable in my over-indulgent earnestness? Or, like happened to the Jesus I pledged to serve, would piles of stones be stacked at the doors, ready for my departing “blessing,” just before lynching?
Well, family and friends back home were kind, not taking a lesson from the murmuring mutterers in Nazareth some twenty centuries earlier. What made things turn so differently for Jesus in his home town? The passage for the day, from Isaiah 61, was marvelous, one of the great testimonies of divine initiative written by the most poetically gifted among the great prophets. Jesus’ message was short and sweet, certainly not preventing folks from getting home before the Sabbath roast was overdone. Even the first responses were strong affirmations of the boy wonder who grew up among us (verse 22). Yet when Jesus added a few explanatory notes, the place exploded with vitriolic bitterness, and mob frenzy strove to end the service with murder (verses 23-30).
These notes about the response of Jesus’ neighbors and friends to his first attempt at preaching help us understand the meaning of this moment. It was not merely a familiar rabbinical student exercising his limited eloquence for a first time with the home town crowd. According to Luke, it was an occasion of incredible divine revelation. Two things, in particular, contributed to its significance. First, there was the text itself. Although written long after Israel’s wilderness beginnings at the foot of Mount Sinai, the word of God that came to the prophet Isaiah was deeply rooted in the Covenant making ceremony that happened back then. Leviticus 25 outlined the greatest of all the festivals that shaped Israel’s calendar. It was the “Year of Jubilee,” a once-in-a-lifetime event when lands would go back to original families, debts would be forgiven, families would be restored, slaves would be freed, and Yahweh would provide enough natural growth from the land that no farming need be done for two years. The whole country could live out a twelve-month party.
Unfortunately, according to the rest of the Old Testament records, the grand “Year of Jubilee” never took place. Purportedly scheduled every fifty years, it was always delayed by circumstances or forgotten by busyness or ignored by consumerism or set aside as inconvenient. By the time of Judah’s exile in 586 B.C., the prophets have begun to talk about the removal of the people from the land as God’s way of making certain that the long neglected “Year of Jubilee” grand Sabbath would finally get its due. If the celebration and rest would not happen with the elect community around, it would happen without them.
The Word of the Lord that came through Isaiah in what we call chapter 61 was a poetic visioning of what things would look like when the “Year of Jubilee” was finally celebrated. The Spirit of God would energize all, and hope and healing and happiness would flood through the settled territories until no need would go unmet, no tear would fall without turning into a smile, no call of hunger would go unanswered by feasting, and no alienation or marginalization would be unaddressed by the best of community-building. One day, someday, maybe Yahweh would come and finally bring in the “Year of Jubilee.”
So when Jesus came home to the synagogue in Nazareth, it was a wonderful thing to hear his voice intone these great promises and prophetic hopes. But the kicker was his short application: “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” It was a declaration that he was bringing in the “Year of Jubilee.” That was either a gross overstatement, since no human had the ability to make such a transcendent event happen, or a mighty egoistical sacrilegious boast, delusional in making Jesus out to be God! Either way, the nice text was given a bad twist in a crudely exaggerated sermonic application. So they would think, not knowing what we believe about Jesus and his work, from out vantage point.
Second, another rub came in the way that the text from Isaiah was cut short by Jesus, when he read it. He failed to read the last clause, “and the day of vengeance of our God.” This phrase was typically used as part of the explanation why the “Year of Jubilee” had not been and could not be celebrated. Other nations prevented it. There was always a political threat which kept the people of God from following through on the magic of these promised months, making it impossible for Israel/Judah to live out the pleasure of this festival. Only if God would come with vengeance and strike our enemies down in disgrace and disaster would we be able to truly enjoy the “Year of Jubilee.”
But when Jesus simply declared that the year had come in himself, and that no punishments were to be meted out on the Romans, the whole matter took a new spin that left the cherished prejudices panting for something Jesus wouldn’t give. God was bringing the blessings of the messianic age through Jesus without necessarily pounding Jewish enemies to pulp. The savory lip-smacking of vengeance was removed from the equation, and now somebody had to pay. Let’s take it out on Jesus! And though this moment of mob hysteria may have seemed like an anomaly, in the months ahead it would become the very movement that would finally bring about Jesus’ excruciating execution. Which, in turn, would actually usher in the very things that Jesus was preaching about. How ironic!
Application
Ibn Saud was the first modern king of Saudi Arabia. He lived during the early half of the twentieth century, and people in the East still talk about his wisdom. One day a widow came to him in a rage. She wanted justice against the old man who had killed her husband. The story was strange: her husband had been walking under a palm tree when the other man, up in the tree gathering dates, slipped and fell on him. Her husband eventually died from internal injuries received in that accident.
Ibn Saud checked the matter out and found it was true. He asked the widow, “What compensation will you take?”
He thought that she would want a pension in order to care for her family in the years ahead. But instead she asked that her husband’s unintentional killer be put to death. She wanted the other man to die. She drew a circle that shut him out.
Ibn Saud knew that her family needed support, not revenge. So quietly and calmly, he tried to talk her out of it. But she was adamant. Her husband was dead, and his slayer must die, too. There was no way to get her off her singular track.
When he saw that his coaxing was useless, Ibn Saud tried one more thing. He agreed to the death penalty, but he decreed that it be carried out in a very specific way. The man who killed her husband, he said, would be bound and set under a palm tree. Then the widow herself must climb the tree and throw herself down on the man, killing him.
“But I might also die”! she protested.
“Yes,” said the king, “but hasn’t your thirst for revenge already destroyed your soul? Aren’t you just as dead as you wish him to be?”
The widow relented. She let the man live, and she received back her own life.
In much the same way, today’s passages speak of grace and healing, often in the context of alienation and separation. When we look at one another through jealous eyes, or with attitudes of judgment, we reduce our worlds to disease and death. But if the gospel of grace and reconciliation and hope pervades our atmosphere, life begins anew.
Alternative Application (Luke 4:14-21)
How would you or I have responded to the first sermon of Jesus? A dear friend once explained it like this: in a dream he saw a marvelous apparatus of yellow silk billowing in the breezes next to a cliff. It was a transportation device of some kind, though he couldn’t see either engines or supports. Like a magical tent, it floated in space.
Inside was a man whose face seemed so familiar and friendly that my friend knew immediately this was an intimate acquaintance. However, he could not seem to remember how they were associated, nor the man’s name. The man, with a smile of warmth, invited him to step off the cliff into the contrivance and be carried on a delightful journey in the yellow tent.
But my friend was so intrigued by the device itself that he wanted to try it on his own. He wanted to pilot the magical airship. So when he entered the craft he fought the man for control and pushed him out onto the cliff. Unfortunately, just as my friend felt the power of flight swell in his commanding grasp, the entire yellow tent began to collapse in on itself, and plummet to disaster below. No matter what he did, my friend could not make the “machine” fly. He cried out for help, and suddenly the man he had pushed out reappeared at his side. In that exact moment the airship began to billow and slow its freefall. Soon they were soaring together.
Without a further thought, my friend knew that the strangely familiar man was Jesus. He also knew why Jesus said to him, “Don’t you know that the power to fly is not found in the ‘machine’ nor in your skills as a pilot but in me?”
None of us begins to soar in life until we meet Jesus. As the whole Bible declares, it is all about Jesus.
