We shouldn’t allow familiarity to make us forget that everything about Jesus is miraculous.
Yesterday, our pastor talked about the passage in Luke where Jesus started his ministry. Luke’s Gospel, has Jesus getting baptized and then going straight out to the desert for forty days to be tempted by Satan. Right after that, he began preaching.
He began preaching in Galilee and was well received, but when he went to preach in Nazareth, the place where he grew up, they didn’t believe in him. They ran him out of town.
My pastor pointed out that the people of Nazareth had watched him grow up. Most of them had probably known him his entire life. He was a carpenter’s son and therefore a carpenter. How could he ever be the one to save them and set them all free? He was too familiar to be great.
Then he asked if Christians suffer from the same problem today. Do we?
Are we content with our felt board stories from Sunday school class, years ago? We know he fed the multitudes. Do we believe that he can feed us? We know he healed the sick? Do we believe that he can heal us? We know that he sought out Zacchaeus, who was seeking him. Do we believe that he seeks to know us? We know that he forgave the adulterous woman. Do we believe that he can forgive us?
Familiarity can be good and bad. Whenever we start something new, a new job, a new relationship, a new church, a new plan, it’s exciting. We can’t get enough or say enough great things about it. But, time goes by and we get comfortable and all of the newness wears off. We can begin to take people for granted. We can stop spending time in close relationship with the ones we hold dear.
We can forget about all of the qualities that had us so excited in the beginning. And where our faith walk is concerned, it’s easy to find ourselves attending Sunday worship service and checking it off of our to-do list. Jesus becomes familiar and not miraculously Divine.
We know that when we die, we will go to Heaven to be with him, but we don’t involve him in our everyday walk. We know those felt board Bible stories, but we don’t dive into the Bible and read them for ourselves. We don’t fully appreciate the miraculous that was, is and will be, Jesus.
Thankfully, we have the power to change. If we want to know him, we have to spend time with him. In John, where we find two of the first disciples, they asked Jesus where he was staying. He told them to come and see. They spent the day with him and they went from calling him a teacher to the Messiah. True belief, requires true relationship.
Secondly, we have to read the Bible. If we want to be amazed all over again, like when we were kids, we need to read the Gospels. They have something new to teach us every time we read them.
Familiarity doesn’t have to be a bad thing. It can describe a relationship that is not only comfortable, but faithful and strong, and full of wonder.
The choice is ours. What will you choose?
Have an awesome day!
Wendy 🙂