IF WE COULD go back 1900 years to Judea and walk with Jesus for a while, I wonder if it would help us learn what discipleship is really all about? If we could see Him heal the sick, soothe the saddened, be gentle to those who had been put out of decent society by their pious contemporaries; if we could watch Him touch the blind man’s eyes, or see Him say to the woman taken in adultery, “Neither do I condemn thee, go, and sin no more” would we know then the meaning of love, and compassion and forgiveness? Or would He have to say to us, as He did to the Pharisees of His day, “Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice'”?
If we could have been in the crowd that day when He spoke from the mountainside: “Blessed are the poor in spirit…” “Blessed are the pure in heart…” “Blessed are the peacemakers…,” could we come back to our own day and help a world and church divided through bad motives and stubbornness and selfishness and self-righteousness? Or would we speak of peacemakers as “soft” and the poor in spirit as “weak” and the pure in heart as “simple”?
If we had been there when the Lord spoke of “the weightier matters of the Law,” and chided His religious contemporaries for getting their spiritual priorities con fused — would we have learned anything from the experience? Or would we come back to our own time and fall into these very same errors? We probably say we would be different. They thought they would have acted differently than their fathers. The fathers killed the prophets. The children crucified the Son of God.
Come to think of it, we can walk with the Lord — as we read Matthew, Mark, Luke or John! Let’s spend some time in His presence — a considerable length of time then apply ourselves honestly to becoming disciples of Jesus. Let’s really make Him Lord. Will you?