When to get serious

I had a conversation with a fellow English teacher yesterday.  She was telling me about a discussion she had with one of her students, a very good English speaker, incredibly intelligent...and also shockingly jaded at his young age.  A good portion of his comments were directed in the form of criticism against his own culture of Korea.  At one point he even went as far as to call his fellow students "monkeys" for their playful, silly behavior.

That got me thinking.  By his definition, most of us would be considered monkeys.  I certainly would be.  I enjoy to clown around and be silly and laugh and have fun.  And my friend's student would certainly not be the only one to criticize me for my apparent childishness. 

But you know what?  I'm pretty sure that Jesus had an inner child, too.  In fact, He reserved His harshest criticism for the most serious people in His life - the pharisees.  There is a time for everything - including both being serious AND cutting loose.  It's ok to be silly and have fun.  The trick is knowing when to be serious again.

Mark 2:18-28

¹⁸ Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. Some people came and asked Jesus, “How is it that John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees are fasting, but yours are not?”
 ¹⁹ Jesus answered, “How can the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? They cannot, so long as they have him with them. ²⁰ But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them, and on that day they will fast.
   ²¹ “No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. Otherwise, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse. ²² And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins.”

Jesus Is Lord of the Sabbath

 ²³ One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain. ²⁴ The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?”  ²⁵ He answered, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? ²⁶ In the days of Abiathar the high priest, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.”
 ²⁷ Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. ²⁸ So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”

The right question

"The artist can, out of his own experience, tell the common man a great deal about the fulfillment of man's nature in living; but he can produce only the most unsatisfactory kind of reply if he is persistently asked the wrong question."     ~Dorothy Sayers

What a curious quote that is.  I had to read it several times before I fully understood what it was trying to say.  But once I did realize, it hit me like a ton of bricks.  I've often thought that some of Jesus' responses to questions asked of Him in the Bible have seemed slightly airheaded; not particularly relevant to the question asked.  But what if the problem lies not on His end, but on ours?  What if we are always asking Him the wrong questions?  The people in the Bible were all so worried about their physical lives - money, health, etc - but Jesus was worried about their spiritual lives.  They wanted to be healed, but he wanted them to be eternally saved.  Perhaps that's why His answers never quite seemed to fit, never worked out as cleanly as His followers would have liked.  All that time, they were simply asking the wrong questions.

How often do we do that in our own lives?  We ask God to make things easier, to prosper us, to heal us.  But God's ways are not ours.  He is working on painting the bigger picture....which, from our perspectives, may seem messy and incomplete.  But God can make all things, both good and bad, work out for our good.

So whenever it seems like God's not listening, or not answering the questions that you're asking, ask yourself: are you asking the right questions?  God isn't in the business of fixing old things; He's in the business of creating new ones.

Mark 2:1-12

 ¹ A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home. ² They gathered in such large numbers that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them. ³ Some men came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. ⁴ Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus by digging through it and then lowered the mat the man was lying on. ⁵ When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”
 ⁶ Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves, ⁷ “Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?”
 ⁸ Immediately Jesus knew in his spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts, and he said to them, “Why are you thinking these things? ⁹ Which is easier: to say to this paralyzed man, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, take your mat and walk’? ¹⁰ But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the man, ¹¹ “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” ¹² He got up, took his mat and walked out in full view of them all. This amazed everyone and they praised God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this!”

Desperate for Him

It's always struck me at how drastic a double standard Christians can apply to their view of the world.  It's so easy to reassure people that God will work out everything in their lives - that their troubles will work out in the end, that their financial strains will ease, that their relationships will improve.  But it's so much harder to believe that the same things will happen in our own lives.  We see all of these miraculous movings of the Lord in other peoples' lives, and never doubt the validity of God's love for them.  But then we turn around and look at our own lives, and are convinced that He has abandoned us!

I was struck by this paradox as I sat down this morning and read the story in Mark 2 about the paralytic man that Jesus healed.  Of course in this particular situation, the paralytic man could not seek out Jesus on his own.  But I was struck by how passionately his friends believed that Jesus could and would heal him.  They were so confident, that they were willing to crawl up on top of a house and tear the roof off so that they could get their friend to Jesus.

On one hand, it's encouraging to see how passionately these men believed in Jesus' ability to heal their friend.  But on the other hand, it's also rather convicting.  When I look at my own life, I have to ask myself if I would really go to such lengths to find the Lord.  How desperate am I, not only to see God in the lives of those around me, but in my own life, as well?  Is it something that takes precedence before everything else?  Or is a secondary element, an afterthought, even?  I charge you to seek the Lord while He may be found.  Seek Him with all your heart.  Don't let anything get in your way.  Become desperate to know Him, and He will not return your efforts void.

Mark 2:1-5

 ¹ A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home. ² They gathered in such large numbers that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them. ³ Some men came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. ⁴ Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus by digging through it and then lowered the mat the man was lying on. ⁵ When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”