Month: December 2020

My son has Down Syndrome and to assist with his special educational needs, an aide was assigned to him over 10 years ago. They immediately bonded and she became a vital part of his school life, assisting and pushing him to learn at the same level as his typical peers. Most aides are changed every year by the school district but the bond that the two forged was unique and all of the school administrators and teachers recognized this. In an unprecedented move, the school district has allowed the two to remain together from elementary school through high school.  We are profoundly grateful for her relationship with our son. She loves him as much as he and all of us love her. She is a part of our family and we would trust our son’s life with this dear woman and sister in Jesus Christ. 

When Jesus saw his mother standing there beside the disciple he loved, he said to her, “Dear woman, here is your son.” And he said to this disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from then on this disciple took her into his home.

John 19:26-27 (NLT)

What greater confirmation of the love and trust is there when one accepts someone into their own family? Our Lord Jesus Christ demonstrated when He turned to His beloved disciple, John,  and asked him to look after His earthly mother, Mary, after He was crucified. He accepted John into His own family, trusting His mother’s life with him. In the midst of the agony of dying on the Cross, Jesus placed His mother’s needs above His own, seeking to ensure she was cared for by someone Jesus loved as a brother. 

Not many of us are fortunate to meet someone that we will accept as a member of our own family. It takes years of trust but once the bond is forged, it is indelible. Isn’t this how God accepts us when we confess and repent of our sins and accept His Son, Jesus Christ, as our Lord and Savior? It may take years for us to trust Him enough to commit our life to Him, but when we do this, God adopts us as His spiritual children and gives us the privilege to call Him Father. He sealed this promise with the blood of His only Son, Jesus Christ, to die on the Cross for our sins. 

In this life, we have an opportunity to embrace all believers in Jesus Christ as family members, brothers and sisters in the Church of Jesus Christ. It is an indelible and eternal bond. The beauty is we do not need to spend years to get to know them and build trust. In Heaven, in the presence of Jesus Christ, we will have an eternity to meet all of them. We will all be able to trust one another because we have been sanctified by power of the Resurrection.

Amen!

Love and trust the Lord; seek His will in your life.

It was Sunday afternoon in my junior year in college. I was returning from my church service and entered my dormitory room to see my roommate lying on his bed. He looked up from the newspaper he was reading. 

“Back from church?” He flashed a sly smile that telegraphed to me that he was about to poke my faith. 

“Yup!” 

“Did you confess your sins? You got a lot of them!”

“I know!” I laughed. “I did confess my sins…” I wanted to seize the teachable moment, “…but I don’t have to go to church to do that.”

“What do you mean?”

“I confess my sins directly to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I don’t have to go to a building or a person. This is why Jesus Christ died for my sins and was resurrected. He showed that He has the power to conquer death and forgive our sins.”

My roommate shook his head. “No that’s wrong! You confess to your priest, that’s why you go to church.”

My roommate’s background was in the Greek Orthodox church and I wanted to be sensitive to his upbringing and beliefs. “Priests are also there to listen and give counsel…but only God can forgive sins.”

“So there is no accountability?”

“If we sin against another person, we are accountable to that person and we must make things right with that person, but whenever we sin, whether it involves another person or just myself, it is always a sin against God. He always holds me accountable for all of my sins, whether I am aware of them or not.”

“Well…” he slowly began, “I think we are only accountable to ourselves and each other.”

“Yes, we are. But if everyone has a different standard of morality, how can we know who is correct? If we disagree how can we be accountable to each other? What makes your standards better than another?”

Miffed, my roommate mumbled, “We just know. Natural selection. Millions of years of evolution have taught us that in order to survive, we must get along.”

He was changing the narrative but my roommate did make a good point. If there is no God, my roommate would be correct. The only accountability we would have is to ourselves and each other, but is this the Truth?

For the wicked one boasts about his own cravings; the one who is greedy curses and despises the LORD. In all his scheming, the wicked person arrogantly thinks, “There’s no accountability, since there’s no God.”

Psalms 10:3-4 (CSB)

If there is no God, there is no absolute standard of morality. The laws of our societies are a reflection of this. What was a felony a few years ago, is now embraced as part of the culture. Abortion on demand, legalized marijuana-these are just a small sample of our changing morality. Like my roommate averred, moral standards change because it is the result of natural selection and the evolution of human morality. There is no absolute standard, just a dynamic evolution, further distancing us from God’s Word.

There is accountability because there is a God who created us and this universe. We may laud ourselves for our evolving morality, substituting accountability to each other and ourselves, for accountability to God. Has this made us better individuals leading to a better society?

We must all realize that we need to be accountable to God alone for our sins and confess and repent of our sins and accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. We desperately need God’s absolute standard of morality to heal this broken world. 

Love and trust the Lord; seek His will in your life.

Sally (not her true name) spent the summer after her sophomore year in college working in the same molecular biology laboratory where I was doing research with another classmate. She had no research position so she accepted the position of a laboratory assistant, washing the glassware for our lab and others. She was a year younger than I was and had never met her prior to that summer. Aside from the usual pleasantries, we did not regularly converse. 

One day, our professor called myself and my classmate into his office. “Guys, it has come to my attention that Sally is interested in molecular biology. I want you to give her some small projects…help her out.”

My classmate and I obliged and oversaw the smaller projects that were assigned to her while we completed our project for that summer. Sally impressively completed her tasks with minimal assistance from myself or my classmate, a feat that was more remarkable since she had never taken a laboratory course in molecular biology. After I left the laboratory, I occasionally saw Sally on campus but never interacted with her again. Several decades later, this quiet student ascended to the heights of world wide acclaim, winning the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, recognizing her groundbreaking work in biochemistry. It is humbling to know that I was her senior, overseeing her work before she even began her career. I was in the presence of greatness and I did not realize it. 

I wonder if the people who met our Lord Jesus Christ recognized His greatness when He was much younger, before He began His ministry? The only clue we are given is from the Gospel of Luke. Every year, Jesus’ earthly parents made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem for Passover. When He was twelve years old, their family made their pilgrimage, celebrated the Passover, and proceeded to return home. However, they did not realize that He was not with them and quickly returned to Jerusalem to search for Him. Dr. Luke records this memorable event. 

Three days later they finally discovered him in the Temple, sitting among the religious teachers, listening to them and asking questions. All who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers.

Luke 2:46-47 (NLT)

The Bible does not reveal what conversations transpired between the religious leaders and Jesus but does give us the clue that the leaders were amazed at His understanding and answers. Somehow I am not surprised. Like my classmate, there were already flashes of brilliance. I wonder how many of them remembered Jesus when He began His ministry nearly twenty years later? I wonder if any could have predicted the impact He would have on the entire world?

Every day we find ourselves in the presence of greatness because every person is a gift from God. God gives everyone the potential to accomplish great things. Our accomplishments may not lead to winning a Nobel prize but God recognizes and honors all types of greatness. He sees a mother at the bedside of her daughter, comforting her as she battles a deadly cancer. He sees a firefighter rushing into a burning house that is about collapse to rescue the trapped family. And He saw the faithfulness of His Son, Jesus Christ, who allowed Himself to be falsely convicted and executed on the Cross for our sins. 

God created us for greatness to serve Him.

Let’s celebrate this greatness in everyone we meet. 

Amen!

Love and trust the Lord; seek His will in your life.