Meditation: focusing on the Big Picture:#4

It’s Thursday, so you might be looking for a leader for your weekend. You know the type: someone who is fun, upbeat, will go with you to lots of fun or thrilling events, still leaving time for completion of papers and studies so you’re all prepared for Monday. You’re looking for someone who will fill you life.

Yesterday, we read about the ordeal in Plattsmouth with the beating of a man with baseball bats. Not much in the area of positive leadership there! Today’s less than stellar report concerns an OPS teacher and girls softball coach who single handedly destroyed her career by driving the wrong way on a one way in downtown Omaha (right in front of the Police Station!) and was ticketed for a Federal DUI!

We’re tempted stick out proverbial noses in the air and think: “How tawdry!” when the reality is most of us are lucky we’ve not gotten caught. We certainly are looking for leaders for the weekend.

Here’s a thought:

When Jesus called his few disciples, he went out immediately and began to heal people. He could have read the news reports and gotten what the British call a “toffee nose.” In those days, chronic illness was thought to be tied to bad behavior—by you, your relatives, people in your tribe, or your leaders. It was logical to believe healing could come only by wiping the slate clean through a sacrifice to God. Jesus, the leader, had another plan:

Matthew 4:
Jesus Ministers to Crowds of People
23Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people. 24So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought to him all the sick, those who were afflicted with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, and paralytics, and he cured them. 25And great crowds followed him from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and from beyond the Jordan.

Jesus led by healing, not by calling peoples’ misdeeds to attention. Later in his life as Son of God and Savior, he adopted additional means of calling attention to God in peoples’ lives, but his first actions were healing ones.

This weekend, we might want to look for a healing presence; or for that matter, be one.