Day 159: Who Sinned?

And His disciples asked Him, saying, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"  Jesus answered, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him."  John 9:2-3

 Jesus has told us the same things in many different ways, yet we still fail to accept the message.

This above passage talks about judging.  We are called not to judge.  We should accept this as the end of the story, but we always want more.  At least, the actions that I observe both around me and even in me show that we all want more.  We want a better explanation on how not to judge.  We want things to be made plain and simple enough.  Or so we say.

In this event, Jesus adds an important detail: our judging prevents us from seeing the works of God.  When we judge, we start to place ourselves on a pedestal constructed of pride.  In fact, we attempt to build a throne that equals God's with our own pride.  However, we end up being the blind people whenever we do so.

Whenever we decide to judge, we put our minds and our whole bodies' resources into judging rather than helping and loving.  The disciples, rather than trying to heal the blind or help him at the very least, decide to judge, forgetting everything else that they had been taught.  In the same way, we abandon everything good, everything loving, when we focus our attention on judging.  Rather than going out and helping others, we end up hurting both ourselves and those in need.  Whenever we don't show love to those in need, we divide the Kingdom of God and destroy it.  That's not what we are called to do.

We are called to unite.  We are called to love.  We are called to be God's Kingdom on earth.

Day 154: Using the Light of God

"Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my paths."  Psalm 118:105 (119:105)

This is an important message that many of us prefer to ignore.

I will admit, the bible as a whole is pretty scary.  There are so many books, and there are so many versions (even in the original languages).  There are so many different authors, so many different theories and interpretations, and so many words.  The book is quite heavy to hold, not only in physical weight but also in terms of ideas.

It's a testament of God's word revealed to people over a long expanse of time.  It is also a reflection of which people thought which books were important enough to consider truly sacred versus apocryphal or heretical.  In it, we can find a constant thread of meaning, expounding upon God's love in its many manifestations.

This metaphor of light is important for us to consider, for it suggests much more than just illumination.  When I think about a light for a specific purpose, I think of the many lights in our lives that have directions: flashlights, headlights, camera flashes, lamps.  These all have a light source, but then they are directed and magnified by mirrors or other tools.  The important thing about this, though, is that each of these lights serve their purpose, and they need to be put to that purpose specifically.  When we use flashlights, we need to point them to wherever there is darkness.  Headlights point directly ahead.  Camera flashes are directed to wherever they need to go in order to make a picture more clear.

In the same way, we need to learn to use the bible.  It is a bright light for the darkness that covers our lives.  One caveat, though, is that we don't know where the darkness is in everybody else's lives.  We can only point the light of the bible effectively towards wherever we need it to point.  It will guide us as we walk closer to God.  We need our light to be pointed forward always.  We don't need it to be pointing left, right, or even behind us.  We need it to be pointing us straight to God.  When we put the bible, our light, for the purpose of revealing God's love in our lives, then we will find God on our paths.

Day 147: Reaching Out

Jesus said to him, "Rise, take up your bed and walk."  And immediately the man was made well, took up his bed, and walked.  And that day was the Sabbath.  The Jews therefore said to him who was cured, "It is the Sabbath; it is not lawful for you to carry your bed."  He answered them, "He who made me well said to me, 'Take up your bed and walk.'"  John 5:8-11

This story is filled with so many ugly details that it fits right into today.

There's a pool with healing powers only for the first person who makes it in.  One paralytic has been waiting thirty eight years to get into the pool, but is always too slow.  Jesus sees him and heals him.  The Jewish leaders tell the man that he is sinning because he is able to walk and take his bed.

When this story is written down on paper, or even read aloud in church or even on our phones (or whatever audio device), we can see how things are messed up.  What gave the leaders the audacity to call out that man from walking with his bed, which was probably stained from his underside and all of that sweat, smelling and probably falling apart?  They had come up with different interpretations of the Law of Moses to the point where things were getting ridiculous.  A man who wanted to celebrate that he was made well, a man who went straight to the temple to worship God after having encountered God Godself, was accused of breaking the Sabbath.  That's just messed up!

Yet, what do we do when we're walking around on the streets, or driving around, and see people begging for money?  The people walking around with their shopping baskets filled with empty cans or clothes or blankets?  The people who shout Alleluia in church?  The person not dressed up enough for an occasion?  What do we tell those who aren't making as much as we are?  What sort of rhetoric do we use when we're talking about the politics in our countries?  How do we treat the people of different genders, race, sexual orientation, creed, or anything else?

We can judge people as soon as we see them, making our decision based off a second of an encounter.  Yet, each person has her/his story.  We can't just dismiss everybody into our own boxes.  What if they had encountered Jesus for the first time that day?  What if they are Jesus?  What if we are Jesus for them?

We have no right to judge.  We only have one thing that we must do, and that is to show love.  We can show everybody around us love, for that is what God has shown us.  God is healing us every day.  We should be thankful for that by showing that same love for those around us.  We need to get excited when the family of God grows, when a new piece of God's Kingdom is built.  Instead of judging those around us, we must always be thankful.

Day 095: Measures

"Judge not, and you shall not be judged.  Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned.  Forgive, and you will be forgiven.  Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom.  For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you."  Luke 6:37-38

Jesus gives us commands that are very direct and simple, yet we seem to forget them.

In a long sermon, Jesus tells us that we are going to face the results of all the things that we do in our lives.  In fact, the way that Jesus commands these things is similar to how God commanded them in the Old Testament - that all the commandments are there so that things would go well in the lives of those who obeyed.  When Jesus makes these commands, though, he explains them very simply.

Many times, we live our lives as if we were still children.  We don't think about how the things we do will affect all of those around us.  Now, many of us will say that we already take many factors into consideration, but when we reevaluate things, we might find many more factors that we could be affecting.  Maybe there is that one person we take for granted: we can trample all over her/him, but we forget that our actions will come right back to us.  That's where the above commandments come into play.

It's impossible for us to take every single person that we will ever encounter into account.  I just learned that the human brain can only maintain around 150 relations with other humans on average.  So what's the solution?  Just think about how you want things to come back to you.  Take all of your criticisms that you would make towards others and apply them to yourself.  Do you hate reading typos in articles?  Then start thinking about what care you should take in your own work.  Do people annoy you for not arriving on time?  Then make sure that you will never have any issues with timing and scheduling. 

One more verse I want to consider today is this: "A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is perfectly trained will be like his teacher."  (Luke 6:40)  A word that seems fleeting is "perfectly".  We think that just by listening to sermons at church or reading the bible will save us.  Jesus is training us.  Jesus is teaching us.  However, his teachings all involve an important point: you have to do them.  The above commandments are all commands.  They involve the second person - the you.  Therefore, let's all remember that Jesus calls us into action.  Jesus is calling us all to put all of his teachings into practice.  We can only train ourselves perfectly if we practice perfectly.  It will be difficult, but when we take the time to evaluate how we do everything with respect to our own lives, we will be able to get closer to being just like Jesus, our teacher.

Finger Pointing

"But the Lord answered him and said, 'You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?'" (Luke 13:15-16)
There are times when we all get caught up on different issues and customs in our beliefs.  The pharisees decided to make very strict interpretations of the Ten Commandments, but those interpretations would get in the way of truly loving God.  Even today, while we don't really have as strict of rules regarding the Sabbath (if any at all), we like to get caught on other issues.  We can't help but point our fingers, even when things aren't the way we want them to be.  Sometimes we accuse others of not being good Christians because they don't say a certain prayer or because they don't pray to a certain saint.  Sometimes we don't like people because they go to a centuries old church rather than one in a smaller building.  We can take this a step further and look at how we treat each other outside of church: if somebody does not subscribe to every single opinion of some of our great advocates, s/he is not part of our LGBT family; if somebody does not identify with a certain subculture in our LGBT family, that person is not doing her/his part.  However, when we get caught up with these issues, we are only hurting ourselves.  Sure, we can point all we want, but our shoulders will tire before anything will happen.  God is the ultimate judge, and God has given us what we need to know: how to love.  When we take the time to point our fingers back to ourselves and notice how we are no longer living in the love of God, then we can change ourselves to be closer with God.