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We are invited to make a pilgrimage—into the heart and life of God.
Jesus stands quietly at the center of the contemporary world, as he himself predicted.
Does Jesus only enable me to “make the cut” when I die? Or to know what to protest, or how to vote or agitate and organize? It is good to know that when I die all will be well, but is there any good news for life? If I had to choose, I would rather have a car that runs than good insurance on one that doesn’t. Can I not have both?
He slipped into our world through the backroads and outlying districts of one of the least important places on earth and has allowed his program for human history to unfold ever so slowly through the centuries.
People trampled one another (Luke 12:1) and ripped roofs off houses (Mark 2:4) to gain access to him.
But they were only responding to the striking availability of God to meet present human need through the actions of Jesus. He simply was the good news about the kingdom. He still is.
“The law and the prophets governed until John. But since then the kingdom of God is announced, and everybody is crowding into it.”
The woman saw Jesus and recognized who he was and who dwelt in him. That vision was her faith. She knew he was forgiving and accepting her before he ever said, “Your sins are forgiven.” She knew because she had seen a goodness in him that could only be God, and it broke her heart with gratitude and love.
When we see Jesus as he is, we must turn away or else shamelessly adore him. That must be kept in mind for any authentic understanding of the power of Christian faith. This woman, unlike nice Simon, was not about to turn away.
Every last one of us has a “kingdom”—or a “queendom,” or a “government”—a realm that is uniquely our own, where our choice determines what happens. Here is a truth that reaches into the deepest part of what it is to be a person.
Any being that has say over nothing at all is no person.
We must, simply, accept that he is the best and smartest man who ever lived in this world, that he is even now “the prince of the kings of the earth” (Rev. 1:5). Then we heartily join his cosmic conspiracy to overcome evil with good.
Descending to particulars always helps to clear the mind.
He is Master only because he is Maestro. “Jesus is Lord” can mean little in practice for anyone who has to hesitate before saying, “Jesus is smart.”
He is not just nice, he is brilliant. He is the smartest man who ever lived. He is now supervising the entire course of world history (Rev. 1:5) while simultaneously preparing the rest of the universe for our future role in it (John 14:2). He always has the best information
The poor in spirit are blessed as a result of the kingdom of God being available to them in their spiritual poverty.
And yet: “He touched me.”
Finally he realized that no one ever asks the poor what they think.
Jesus did not say, “Blessed are the poor in spirit because they are poor in spirit.” He did not think, “What a fine thing it is to be destitute of every spiritual
What could be more plain? If the usual interpretation of Jesus’ Beatitudes as directions on how to attain blessedness is correct, you would have to be poor, have to mourn, be persecuted, and so forth, to be among the blessed. We would therefore expect anyone who seriously accepted this interpretation to seek to become poor, sad, persecuted, and so on, but very few people actually do this. Can it be enough just to feel guilty for not doing it?
The reigning of God over life is the good news of the whole Bible:
Prayer simply dies from efforts to pray about “good things” that honestly do not matter to us. The way to get to meaningful prayer for those good things is to start by praying for what we are truly interested in. The circle of our interests will inevitably grow in the largeness of God’s love.
Prayer is a matter of explicitly sharing with God my concerns about what he too is concerned about in my life.
