The full acting out of the self's surrender to God therefore demands pain: this action, to be perfect, must be done from the pure will to obey in the absence, or in the teeth, of inclination. How impossible it is to enact the surrender of the self by doing what we like...”
MATTHEW 21:1-22
12Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. 13“It is written,”he said to them, “ ‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’e but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’f ”
14The blind and the lame came to him at the temple, and he healed them. 15But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did and the children shouting in the temple courts, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they were indignant.
16“Do you hear what these children are saying?” they asked him.
“Yes,” replied Jesus, “have you never read,
“ ‘From the lips of children and infants
you, Lord, have called forth your praise’g ?”
17And he left them and went out of the city to Bethany, where he spent the night.
JOURNAL
So Jesus goes in and turns the Temple upside down, heals the lame and the blind and children begin to sing his praises. I can only imagine the scene...it turns from a place of profiting off of peoples guilt and struggle to a place of healing and rejoicing. This is God's vision of the church...this is what we should aspire to create.
Aspire to create...after writing those words it really makes me question what am I aspiring to create? What vision have I accepted and surrendered to pursue? I think this question is critical in the life and faith of believers. Jesus had a specific mission, so did David, Abraham, Solomon, Moses, Noah, the disciples. As humans we need something to pursue, a path to travel, a direction to seek. Without a burning yes, our lives become surrendered to comfort, resignation and protection.
Yet that burning yes must be unique to our faith, our walk and our heart. I believe God gives every human on this earth a life pursuit, a burning yes, but too often the experiences of our lives deter us from this path. Failures, disappointments and heartaches can serve to throw water on our hopes and passions. It can leave us longing for a way to change the past, bitter about the present and hopeless for our future.
I think Jesus' actions in the temple that day were for the purpose of reaffirming this in our hearts. It was a wakeup call to counter all those things that threaten to steal our core hopes and dreams.
So Jesus goes in and turns the Temple upside down, heals the lame and the blind and children begin to sing his praises. I can only imagine the scene...it turns from a place of profiting off of peoples guilt and struggle to a place of healing and rejoicing. This is God's vision of the church...this is what we should aspire to create.
Aspire to create...after writing those words it really makes me question what am I aspiring to create? What vision have I accepted and surrendered to pursue? I think this question is critical in the life and faith of believers. Jesus had a specific mission, so did David, Abraham, Solomon, Moses, Noah, the disciples. As humans we need something to pursue, a path to travel, a direction to seek. Without a burning yes, our lives become surrendered to comfort, resignation and protection.
Yet that burning yes must be unique to our faith, our walk and our heart. I believe God gives every human on this earth a life pursuit, a burning yes, but too often the experiences of our lives deter us from this path. Failures, disappointments and heartaches can serve to throw water on our hopes and passions. It can leave us longing for a way to change the past, bitter about the present and hopeless for our future.
Yet that burning yes must be unique to our faith, our walk and our heart. I believe God gives every human on this earth a life pursuit, a burning yes, but too often the experiences of our lives deter us from this path. Failures, disappointments and heartaches can serve to throw water on our hopes and passions. It can leave us longing for a way to change the past, bitter about the present and hopeless for our future.
I think Jesus' actions in the temple that day were for the purpose of reaffirming this in our hearts. It was a wakeup call to counter all those things that threaten to steal our core hopes and dreams.
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