"Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me." John 14:1
It has been a bit since my last entry, because life has taken a few turns, some expected (Thanksgiving) and some not (hospital stay for my mother-in-law and a hospital visit for myself.) Needless to say it has been a little difficult to sit down and think about this verse in any sense of depth. My heart has been anything but 'not troubled'. Thanks to my hospital stay and the medicine associated with its recovery my sleeping has been erratic which when combined with a 2 year old has made me for an unhappy camper the past four days or so. Luckily I only have one more day of pills and then maybe, hopefully, prayerfully, please dear baby Jesus I will get back to my normal sleep (which in itself is not the greatest).
As I say, my heart has not been untroubled, and I'm sure you have been there, perhaps you are there now, and I don't know about you, but Jesus commands to be untroubled or unworried are the commands I have the hardest time with. I was not always like this, there was a time when I would have said that I had a 'no worries' kind of life, those days are further and further in the rearview. Nowadays I find that I believe in Jesus, I believe in his teachings, I believe in his mission, but I find it hard to believe that I need not worry, that my heart can actually be untroubled. And I think that, that is all right.
Jesus is not a simple guy to follow, many of his commands the best of us [and I am not including myself in that plural] have a hard time following. We are commanded to love our neighbors and our enemies and we don't want to. We are told to love God with all of our being and we stretch our love thin over a wide area. We are told to care for widows and orphans yet we don't want to fund the government programs that would do it, nor do we want the church to actively participate in their troubles. We are told to lift up our cross and lay down our life daily and we lay down the cross and lift up our lives instead. We are not perfect, and I think that, that is all right.
Have you ever realized that we are called to follow Jesus, not actually be Jesus? Over and over again Jesus called for people to follow him, and following does not equal being, because frankly we have a hard enough time following. Advent is upon us, a time of preparation, a time when we wait for the coming of Jesus into our world and into our hearts. This advent may you prepare a new place for Jesus to enter, it won't be a perfect place, but I think that, that is all right.
+ How is your heart, troubled or untroubled?
+ How can you move it to the untroubled side of the equation?
+ How will you prepare a place for Jesus this advent season?
No comments:
Post a Comment