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Posts Tagged ‘truth’

Pilate Satisfied the Crowd

Posted in Lent, tagged , , , , , , on April 7, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Mark 15:14-15
“Why? What crime has he committed?” asked Pilate.
But they shouted all the louder, “Crucify him!”
Wanting to satisfy the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas to them. He had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified.

In the end, Pilate satisfied the crowd because it was easier. He had no fear of Jesus. He discounted the warnings of his wife. He viewed the whole matter as an inconvenience. He made a few lame attempts at releasing Jesus instead of Barabbas. And I’m sure he even knew it was the priests who were driving the crowd. But most of all, he knew Jesus was innocent. He took the path of least resistance. Truth was not essential.

Today, I read in Luke 21:34… “Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with dissipation, drunkenness and the anxieties of life…” where Jesus warned the people that these things will prevent a person from recognizing the truth of events unfolding in the end times. A dissipated heart could be interpreted as a heart wasted away by misuse, drunkenness as “self-medication” and anxiety as fear of self-control (for in the end, anxiety occurs when we can’t control our circumstances). All of these prevent us from seeing the truth. And so, we take the easier path, just like Pilate. We have lost the ability to feel the pain of others, we run from our own pain, and we build walls around our world to keep out the messiness of life.

Today, I will seek courage for seeing truth and choosing the way of it. Today, I will exercise my heart, my mind, and my soul for the sake of Christ.

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Come to Your Senses

Posted in Lent, tagged , , , on March 26, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Luke 15:17
When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death!

The young man, often called the prodigal, is in a far country where he spent all of his money and ended up working as a hired hand, feeding pigs. Only after much loss and suffering did he “come to his senses.” He finally looked and really saw. He really felt what he was touching. He registered what he really was smelling. He confronted the truth of his situation.

Like the frog in the kettle, we often become anesthetized to our environment, not realizing we are dying. It’s not easy to face the truth because the truth will demand a response: action. And action means change. The first step is our own. We all fear change to some degree or another. But, let us remember the end of this story. The young man returns to his father’s house and is warmly welcomed. Father God is always ready to catch us when we make a leap of faith.

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Mystery

Posted in Lent, tagged , , , , , , on February 23, 2008| Leave a Comment »

The story of Daniel has many mysteries, but one of the most well known is the revelations that God gave him about the dreams of Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 2). I have not had any mysterious dreams, but I do wonder today why things work the way they do. The juxtaposition of events is always a bit peculiar. This past weekend, my children all went on a Chrysalis weekend, a mountain top if not life-changing one for all of them. And then, they all got sick (virus heaven on the weekend I suppose) and then, I too, became ill, but with a more mysterious ailment than just a cold.

I am currently in a lot of discomfort along with some pain below my sternum and so far, in a week of tests and doctor appointments, no one knows the source or cause of my problem. It’s a mystery. In my heart I believe that God is in this, but I don’t know yet, in what way. In verse 2:18, Daniel says to his friends, plead for mercy from God concerning this mystery… he was asking for revelation, a supernatural understanding of what Nebuchadnezzar’s dream was and what it meant. Note… they needed to discover what it was before it’s meaning could be discerned.

There are actually many mysteries in our lives like this… and I think we don’t spend enough time asking God for the mercy of revelation. We are too busy using our own knowledge or the knowledge of others to reveal truth, when we should be asking God for it.

We don’t spend enough time identifying what is actually happening. We don’t look deeply enough into the nature of the events. We assume too much. We interpret before we know. We interpret the symptoms… the outward expressions of what is.

Today, I ask… I plead oh God, for an understanding of what is…

I remember my salvation story a true expression of this idea… when I came to the Lord, it was because a classmate challenged me to read the New Testament the same way we were being instructed in acting school to read scripts. For the first read-through, we were told to put the phrase, “If this were true…” and only after taking all the words at face value … to get the full intent of what they words actually say … could we begin to interpret. It was this reading of the Word that brought me to my knees before God, alone, on Christmas Eve, 1979.

There is a core truth to every event.

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