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But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness Gal 5:22 |
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Dear
Friend,
If you do not already have a habit of gathering daily manna the first thing in the morning (we can look at the example given to us in Exodus 16 and find the pattern for make it a habit. Establish your life and your schedule to allow you the necessary time to do your daily collection first thing every morning to give you the strength to make it through the day. And remember that today’s manna will not be sufficient for tomorrow; tomorrow’s manna must be collected tomorrow morning. Saturday, February 17, 2024
Today's Passage : Today's Passage :Jesus Goes to the Festival of Tabernacles Bible Verse:John 7:1-9 (ESV) "After this Jesus went about in Galilee. He would not go about in Judea, because the Jews were seeking to kill him. Now the Jews' Feast of Booths was at hand. So his brothers said to him, “Leave here and go to Judea, that your disciples also may see the works you are doing. For no one works in secret if he seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world.” For not even his brothers believed in him. Jesus said to them, “My time has not yet come, but your time is always here. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil. You go up to the feast. I am not going up to this feast, for my time has not yet fully come.” After saying this, he remained in Galilee." Message:
In this passage, Christ interacts with some people that appear to be his actual siblings (although there is some disagreement about this). The saying “a prophet is without honor in his own land” appears to apply to his family as well. His own brothers do not believe in him.
The effect of his brothers’ statements to him is that he should put himself at risk of death, but this does not seem to be intentional on their part. Their reasoning is perfectly logical, and despite their lack of full committed belief in him, there is no other indication of actual malice. The passage really comes across like a family conversation. They could almost be a group of brothers today discussing a trip to a rock festival.
Jesus is my savior
But Christ, knowing that he is at risk of death in Judea, will not go. Even though he fully realizes that his fate is to die at the hands of the Jewish ruling council in Jerusalem — the Sanhedrin — the time for his passion has not arrived. John’s perspective on the life of Christ is very much like an ancient Greek tragedy, where the entire audience knows in advance how it will turn out; only, unlike a Greek tragedy, the central figure himself knows the outcome. He might be saying, “I’m not going to Jerusalem; that occurs in Act IV and we have just begun Act II.”
It adds so much to our emotional connection to Jesus, to understand how long in advance he knew about the terrible suffering he was to endure. When we forget, or find it difficult to conceive of God’s love being infinite, here is a concrete demonstration of how vast it is. There are certainly regular people who give up their lives out of love for others; but it is a rare and marvelous thing that a person should choose the certainty of a horrible death by torture, years in advance, and live in potential freedom with his sacrifice hanging over his head.
But God became human to do exactly that: to show us the extent of his love, by volunteering for an inconceivably difficult and painful sacrifice.
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