Dai­ly Reflec­tion
Jan­u­ary 18, 2008

I reflect on the groups of peo­ple who “rec­og­nized Christ” for who He was – it was the large group of peo­ple who had gath­ered to hear his Word and it was the group of peo­ple who brought the indi­vid­ual with paral­y­sis. Both groups of peo­ple rec­og­nized Christ. We are called to rec­og­nize Christ in the oth­er. Do we do that?

We can’t just say – “but, things are dif­fer­ent today.” I think it took as much, if not more, faith, imag­i­na­tion, reflec­tion, com­pas­sion, and courage for them to rec­og­nize Christ than it does for us today. There were, undoubt­ed­ly, oth­er peo­ple who den­i­grat­ed them for believ­ing in Christ and lis­ten­ing so eager­ly to His Word. There were prob­a­bly peo­ple who den­i­grat­ed the four men for going to the trou­ble of seek­ing care for the indi­vid­ual with paral­y­sis by low­er­ing him into a room through a roof. Just like there are peo­ple in Jan­u­ary 2008 who may den­i­grate you and I for see­ing Christ in oth­ers who some would like to disregard.

I think about the man who was par­a­lyzed, about his fam­i­ly, and, about the four men they engaged to car­ry him – what faith they demon­strat­ed in Christ! Do you and I have such faith? What might be some­thing in our life today where we could be demon­strat­ing more faith?

I think about the scribes. Today, because we have the 2000 year his­tor­i­cal knowl­edge, I could respond with irri­ta­tion at their seem­ing nit­pick­ing rule-ori­ent­ed behav­ior. Or, I could be gen­er­ous in thought, and rec­og­nize, giv­en their edu­ca­tion and social­iza­tion, they were gen­uine­ly con­cerned about keep­ing the faith as they had been taught. We now know that Christ was show­ing a new way. They did not have that knowledge.

What cre­at­ed the dif­fer­ence in the peo­ple who were open to Christ and those who held on to past beliefs? Why did some peo­ple have faith in Christ then? Why did some peo­ple hold onto the belief sys­tems they were edu­cat­ed with and social­ized into? And, in 2008, which group of peo­ple do we belong to? In 2008 there are many par­al­lel fac­tors and phe­nom­e­na that call us away from a belief and prac­tice of Christ’s teach­ings. It does not mat­ter what part of the globe we live on – there are social, polit­i­cal, sec­u­lar, sci­en­tif­ic, etc. vari­ables that could result in us hav­ing scribe-like behav­ior. What can we learn from the two groups of peo­ple not­ed above in the first para­graph about hav­ing faith in Christ as we enter into the New Year?