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New! New Essay! Thoughts from the Gadarene Cemetery New! New Essay!
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Grown Up Bible Stories
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Peter was back on Lake Galilee. In fact,
he and six of Jesus' other friends went fishing. Peter had suggested the
venture. Perhaps he needed money. Then too, their world had moved through
disaster to a whole new understanding of death and hope in a few short days.
Perhaps they all needed to step back and regroup. In any event, Peter was
fishing on Galilee again. We don't know that Peter intended to return to fishing
as a career, but he did go fishing this particular night. He was doing what he'd
done before Jesus came along and said, “Follow Me.”
In light of this experiential knowledge, Peter and his friends had their senses and their sensibilities challenged over and over by Jesus Christ. Jesus fitted the natural world extremely well, but He claimed to be from the spirit world. Peter and his friends believed in Jesus and His claims, but like many believers for much of history, they didn't always recognize all the implications of their beliefs. They were students of the one Man who uniquely brought the loving side of the spiritual world into the physical world. It should come as no surprise that their faith and minds didn't always keep up.
It wasn't exactly the best of times. The crowds that constantly swirled around Jesus left little chance for rest. Jesus' team was tired. Jesus had given Simon the name Peter—the Rock, but even this sturdy man was tired. He had dubbed James and John The Sons of Thunder, but even these energetic men needed a break. Now word had come that John the Baptizer was dead. Actually, it was worse than dead. The Roman-appointed king had abused his power to execute John for telling him his adulterous marriage was sinful. It is easy to imagine the emotional impact of John's death on Jesus and His twelve closest followers . . . There was no natural explanation for what had just happened. But then, Jesus really didn't need natural explanations. He had a special connection to the supernatural.
The Fisherman and the Carpenter
People often describe Peter as a big, rough-hewn working man. They see him as outspoken, impulsive, and ignorant, a man who needed help. Actually, what history records of the man whose first name was Simon suggests a bit more gracious interpretation. Outspoken he was. We really don't know if he was tall, short, fat, thin, dignified, or rough. We do know that he was a religious man who had never fudged on his kosher diet. We know that he was the kind of family man whose mother-in-law found welcome in his home. He was also a professional and a businessman. He was a professional fisherman. He also seems to have been a partner in his fishing venture. As such, it isn't really stretching things to call this technical expert a businessman as well.
We don't know much about the seven men who plied the creepy trade of exorcism. We know they were brothers. Their dad's name was Sceva. They traveled the ancient world, driving—or at least attempting to drive--evil spirits from the possessed. As Jews, their own religious background avoided the mysterious spirits that hung out around pagan temples. In addition to their own safe worship, they had learned traditional methods that seemed to help drive off unwanted spirits. Thus equipped, they became a resource of last resort for those whose lives had turned terrible.
He couldn’t just shake his head and mutter something about the will of God. He had too much at stake. He had one child, a twelve-year-old girl. She was his only one, and she was ill, deathly ill. Religious man or not, it is neither natural nor right to walk away from a dying child and assume that her death is the will of God. So today, this man went to seek a religious figure from outside the local organization.
A Man for an Impossible Situation
He was a legend in his own time. The first son of the nation’s first king, he stood to inherit the crown. He even showed promise of filling that crown better than his father did. A national hero, a man with great popular support, he had a lot going for him. Only, as the saying goes, "It’s hard to soar with the eagles when you work with a bunch of turkeys." In this case, it wasn’t a bunch of turkeys—it was his royal father.
She was desperate. Her three-month old baby lived under a death warrant, and hiding him grew more difficult by the day. She was part of an oppressed ethnic group living in the territory of one of the world’s superpowers. The government had decreed that all baby boys of her race must die. It was an effort at population control, an effort born of mistrust and prejudice. Today, we’d call the whole mess ethnic cleansing. When the midwives who delivered her people’s babies managed to outsmart the ruler’s command to kill all male children at birth, the command had become general. All of this king’s subjects were ordered to drown any infant boys found among the unwanted people. A command that broad was impossible to escape. Her baby had to go in the river. She had hidden him as long as was humanly possible. The end result was inevitable. It was time to face reality and let the sweet little thing go.
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Essays
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New! Thoughts from the Gadarene Cemetery
First, the disclaimer: I have yet to visit the holy land. I am not sitting among archeological tombs near the east shore of Galilee thinking about events that happened there long ago. Be that as it may, I have been studying the account of Jesus and the demon-possessed men who once lived in that cemetery. In comparing the records of three Gospels, I am struck by the fact that there were two demon-possessed men. Mark and Luke only tell of one. Matthew says there were two. Jesus obviously delivered both from the legion of evil spirits. Yet, the Scriptures almost ignore one of those men.
Dying with Dinner in Its Mouth
The winter hadn’t been kind to the local fish, and that spring a number of their carcasses came ashore for the world to see. Many fish had suffocated when thick ice prevented the air from replenishing the oxygen supply in the water. Two fish, however, had died for a different reason.
On Growing Up Without Television
It's kind of ironic, but I watch a lot of television at work. The people I work for subscribe to cable and keep a TV in the office. When there's down time or when my duties keep me inside, I see something I have spent most of my life without.
My Cat's Food is Eating His Food
My cat's food is eating his food! OK, now that you're thoroughly confused, here's what's happening.
“Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.” The man who spoke those words had incredible gall. He had just admitted he deserved to be hanging by nails from a wooden rack in public. He had just admitted he was dying because he was evil.
What is eternal life worth? Is it worth everything? Think about death. Think about Hell. Such thoughts bring to mind the day a school bully was chasing me. He grabbed my jacket. I slipped out of my jacket and kept running. I was willing to pay about any price if only I could make it safely home. When making it safely home means making it to Heaven, there is no price I wouldn’t be willing to pay. That price leads to a problem.
I felt honored the day a little boy waved at me. He was sitting by his back door on a nice spring morning. I was across the alley running a forklift for the lumber company for which I had recently started working. Presumably, he would have waved at any adult whose attention he could claim, but then, I was a little boy once too. A man driving a forklift is exciting to a preschooler. Driving a forklift comes across as less exciting to the man driving it.
“Dave, I want to show you something.” My flight instructor took control of the two-seat Cessna. Moments later the airplane pitched over. The sky disappeared from the windshield as we plunged earthward, spinning wildly. I felt like I was going to die as I braced against gravity. We were in what pilots call a spin. While the fear factor was real, I had asked for this very experience.
Are you willing to fail for the Lord? Fail for the Lord? Now wait a minute!
I gave my cat a dose of flea medicine today.
An observer would suspect
I tortured him.
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