The Book of Common Prayer’s Gospel reading for November 25, 2007 is Luke 23:35-43. It’s a great text but, for me, it just doesn’t seem to fit for this Sunday, does it? Last Sunday maybe, but not today, Christ the King Sunday. On this day don’t you think we should be focusing on king stuff and not cross stuff. Yet, there we find the King, in all His capitol K glory, hanging on a cross being killed by His own creation.

Jesus is a different kind of king, however, so maybe He would be pleased for this text to be the text of the day. He was so absent of arrogance and so filled with humility and so loving and forgiving, maybe that is what we most need to see about Him on this last Sunday of Christian year.

Besides that, wouldn’t you know it, even in His dying moments He isn’t isolated but is so present as to bring the grace of God into the life of a man dying beside Him. In a few moments He will die saying, “Father, into Your hands I commit My Spirit” (Luke 23:46). Before this, however, He prays “Father, into your hands I commit the spirit of this man beside me. His actions and decisions over the years have brought Him to this cross, Father, but today I’ve told him that he will be with me in Paradise. So, I give him to you, Father. Take him home.”

In the midst of all the sneering and mocking and abuse Jesus finds it in His heart to touch one more human being before He goes back to heaven. You know what? I think this unnamed criminal made it to paradise that day, not because of who he was but because of who Jesus is.

What a great story. What a wonderful moment in time. What a momentous act of forgiveness. More than these, though, what a Savior. What a KING.

It used to bother me that I didn’t have a better awareness of prophecies about the future. I just never could get the time frames down and the flow charts together or an exact understanding of what all those weird looking creatures in Biblical visions and dreams were all about. I felt like a failure that I couldn’t, with a sense of confident assurance, tell people exactly and precisely what was barreling down the pike toward them. Then one day I started reading the Bible a bit more closely.

Did you know Jesus Himself didn’t even know when He was coming back for His Church? In Mark 13:32 He said, “Of that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.” As if that isn’t enough, just prior to His giving the gift of the Holy Spirit to His Church He said, “It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority” (Acts. 1:7). Sounds like dates and timetables and charts weren’t on His agenda.

What was on Jesus’ agenda was the fact that He was coming back, that the world was moving toward a day of judgment, and that as those days approached His people were to know that those days would “lead to an opportunity for your testimony” (Luke 21:13). In that light Jesus said two important things: (1) “See to it that you are not misled” (Luke 21:8), and (2) “By your endurance you will gain your lives” (Luke 21:19).

Instead of His people being preoccupied with “times and epochs” Jesus called them to know that they would “receive power when the Holy Spirit” had come upon them, and that in that remarkable power they would be His witnesses ”to the remotest part of the earth” (Acts 1:7-8).

Spirit-filled power. Now that’s something worth sinking your teeth into.

W.C. Fields was not known for having a heart for the Bible, but one day he was caught reading the Bible, and he was asked why. His response was, “I’m looking for loopholes.”

Mr. Fields seems to have many friends all around the world who are doing the same thing-- looking for loopholes. One’s worldview drives this kind of looking-for-loopholds thinking. Some folk’s philosophy of life is so settled for them that anything not embraced by their belief system is challenged. Particularly, when it comes to Jesus it seems that some people will do just about whatever they need to do to trip Him up or trap Him so that they can win the “Gotcha” game.

In Luke chapter 20 we are told that the Sadducees didn’t believe in resurrection so, of course, they had issues with Jesus who profoundly believed in resurrection. In order to stump Him and make Him look bad, I suppose, they came up with an outrageous story about a woman whose husbands kept dying. In that culture it was the responsibility of a brother to take care of a widow when her husband died. This woman started going through husbands like you wouldn’t believe -- seven of them; and the Sadducees wanted to know whose wife of the seven brothers she would be in heaven.

Jesus said they had missed the whole point. In heaven it’s not about marrying. It’s about being in the presence of God who changes an old order of things for a brand new sinless order. Besides that, Jesus said, God isn’t the God of the dead. That’s a “gotcha” question. God is the God of the living. This sounds like there may be a lot of stuff you and I need to work out long before we see who's marrying who in heaven, or what it means to be like an angel.

We really do need to stick with the real questions; questions that matter for all eternity. Do you believe in resurrection? If you do it wouldn’t be a bad idea to prepare for it. What we believe about resurrection is a pretty serious deal. Playing “Gotcha” games with God probably isn’t the best use of our time.

Long ago there was a hated Jewish tax collector by the name of Zaccheus, who was small in stature but still had a way about him that enabled him to do his job so well that he was rich. He worked for Rome and made his money off the backs of his fellow Jews who very much disliked him. In fact, his job, a long with every tax collector working for Rome had gained him the title, "Sinner." Needless to say, in a very real way he was a man without a country.

I suppose we all have our stories don’t' we? Through choices we've made, attitudes we've held, poor decisions that have disconnected us from family and friends, we find ourselves making it, but not really. We're okay but not really. Everything's fine, but not really.

Then Jesus came to town one day and Zaccheus wanted a look at the show. The only problem is that Jesus isn't much into show and before he knew what hit him, Jesus had invited himself to Zaccheus' house.

Exactly what happened over the next few moments is unclear. We just know that something profound and life changing took place in this tax collector. Suddenly he was making great promises and incredibly generous statements about how he was going to change his ways. He was going to give up to half his possessions to the poor and to those he had defrauded he was going to return to them four times as much as he had taken from them.

Apparently his response wasn't just words and empty promises. At least Jesus believed him and said, "Today salvation has come to this house, because he, too, is a son of Abraham" (Luke 19:9).

This one man who was lost found God and it changed his life. I wonder if there are others like him around us. We really need to bring Jesus to them because Jesus said that He came "to seek and to save that which was lost" (Luke 19:10).

He found you one day and me, too. I wonder if there’s anybody else in our town like us who also needs to be found by God?

Jesus had some words to say to people whose religion had gone to their heads but not their hearts. Head religion is a dangerous enemy to those who long to know God. It builds false security and creates illusions of holiness, when holiness is, in fact, far, far away.

In Luke 18:9-14 Jesus tells the story of a man whose Head was filled with religion but whose heart didn't know God. In this condition the man lived out his self-righteous charade, so full of himself that he actually "viewed others with contempt." So arrogant in his religious charade was he that he actually thanked God he wasn't like those other low-life people; you know the kind, "swindlers, unjust, adulterers, and tax-collectors." Apparently he was so busy fasting and tithing and self-exalting that "other people" were a nuisance to him, folks he didn't much want to be around.

As the man prayed at the altar of God one day, a certain tax collector, also wanting to pray but not feeling worthy enough to come inside the temple, just stood "some distance away" and said, "God, be merciful to me, the sinner" (Luke 18:13).

Of the two men who prayed that day only one was heard by God and it wasn't the one who thought of himself as being so very holy. Of the man who stood at a distance Jesus said he went home justified. Of the other man Jesus said (and may I have some literary license?) "Go home. You're wasting my time and yours."

Then Jesus said, "Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted" (Luke 18:14). I think that's another way of saying, "Get real. Never forget from whence you come. Don't be religious. Instead, fall in love with God and live a life of love and forgiveness. Receive others the way God has received you."

Southern California fires

Hello, everybody,

A member of our church shared with me that her daughter and grandchildren have been evacuated from their home in San Diego County, along with thousands of others. I've watched the NEWS along with you and can't even begin to get my mind around all the devastation and suffering that is happening this week here in Southern California. In this matter, I am calling our church to prayer.

Some of you have friends who are impacted by the some 13 fires burning in Southern California today. It has been a devastating week, and for thousands of people this week is just the beginning of a long journey of recovery. I want to ask you to be available to help -- in prayer, in moral support, in financial assistance, in whatever way you can.

When the fires go out, and they will, the road to rebuilding and recovery will go on for months and months, if not years.

This is a time for persistent, tenacious, and ongoing prayer, and for persistent, tenacious and ongoing availability to serve others in whatever way we are able to do so.

Thanks for being there.

Pastor Rick Savage

It is a perplexing world in which we live – uncertain and bewildering. Life motivated one driver to put on his automobile bumper a sticker announcing to everyone behind it, ‘Life is hard and then you die.” Prophets of doom and gloom are everywhere.

Jesus, on the other hand, gathered His people around Him one day and told them a story. He told them this story “to show that at all times they ought to pray and not to lose heart” (Luke 18:1-8). Consequently we will not be putting on the church marquee the words of the bumper sticker theologian. Instead we invite everybody to gather around Jesus, listen to his story, and not become bitter, hard and cynical.

Life is hard, by the way, but Jesus calls us not to lose heart. Jesus calls us to the Father before whom we are invited to pour out our woes, or stories, and our lives. We are invited to the Father where Jesus says we will be heard and received.

Life is hard. Some things are just about unbearably hard. Some things rip at the heart and devastate the emotions. There are some things over which we simply must come before God and “cry to Him day and night.” And, the word of Jesus in these matters is that to those who do cry out to God day and night, He will bring about justice.

God does have a question, however. Jesus says, “When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth” (Luke 18:8)? Can we keep looking unto God when life keeps barreling down on us? When the times are hard and the temptation to cynicism is great what will we conclude, that Life is hard and then you die, or that life is hard but God is still God? Shall we give up or shall we give everything up to God? Jesus says, pray and don’t lose heart.

I’m with Him on this. Shall we pray together?

In a short, concise, and to the point story Luke tells us about Jesus and ten leprous men (Luke 17:11-19). The men had cried out to Jesus for mercy and it was mercy He gave them, mercy in the form of physical healing. Then He sent them off to church so that the priests could see that they were healed. If the priests were satisfied then a process could be started that would allow these ostracized men to enter again into the community and get their lives back.

One of the men put his trip to the priests on hold, turned around and came back to Jesus to thank Him for the act of mercy that had been extended to him. Luke says the man was “glorifying God with a loud voice, and he fell on his face at [Jesus] feet, giving thanks to Him” (vs. 15-16). Jesus had asked none of the ten to do this and none of the ten did, except this one man who had two issues going against him – he was a leper and he was a Samaritan.

Jewish folks and Samaritan folks didn’t get along too well and I’m not sure that just any priest would have received this Samaritan. We’ll leave that to the speculators. What we do know is that this Samaritan man came back to this Jewish man, fell on his face before Him and gave thanks.

Jesus was impressed. He knew this man was a “foreigner” (vs. 18), and He knew this man’s issues. Maybe that’s why He was impressed, that instead of an act of narcissism, this one lone Samaritan-foreigner forgot about himself for a moment and fell on his face before this One who had made such a profound impact on his life.

Putting the future on hold just to give thanks. That’s the kind of guy I would like to know. That’s the kind of guy I want to be.

“Mustard seed” talk from the lips of Jesus is intriguing to me (see Luke 17:5-10). He seems to be obsessed with the littleness of the mustard seed and yet also moved with the possibilities of power and potential within that small seed. What Jesus has to say about faith he says in the context of this very small seed, a seed so small that one might be deceived into thinking that nothing large or great could come of it. But they would be wrong.

“Faith like a mustard seed” (vs. 6) has power in it no one can fully explain. We think if we had more faith or greater faith things would be different and we could do great things for God. Jesus says that (and please forgive me for being some what simplistic) little faith operating within the reality of God so changes the dynamics of any given situation, or people, that what has been thought of as impossible is now seen in a different light so much so that it is like speaking to a great “mulberry tree” and commanding it to “be uprooted and be planted in the sea” (vs. vs. 6).

Now, I don’t want to burst anybody’s bubble but I need to tell you that you probably ought not to go out commanding mulberry trees to uproot and go into the sea. First of all they wouldn’t budge and secondly, most of them are fine right where they are, thank you very much. So, what in the world is Jesus driving at?

Maybe Jesus is telling His people to quit acting like God is dead and start living like He is very much alive. Maybe Jesus is telling us that life in the kingdom is not defined by life in this world but that life in the kingdom is defined by the life of God. In God maybe little is much. Maybe small is enough. Maybe my life in the hands of God is a life that has God-size potential and possibility.

May God is God after all. Maybe after everything is said and done there is still God. Maybe we can be what God has called us to be. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful thing?

Of all the things it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ it seems that receiving persons as persons is very high on the list. We live in a much divided world, an us-verses-them world. We have the rich and the poor, my tribe and your tribe, my color and your color, my ways and your ways – and never the twain shall meet. And, Jesus says NO to all this.

Jesus tells us the story of a very rich man whose wealth allowed him to do just about whatever he wanted to do, and He tells the story of a very poor man, a man so poor that he didn’t have health care, and lived out his days “covered with sores, and longing to be fed with the crumbs which were falling from the rich man’s tables” (Luke 16:20).

The rich man had no place for God in his life and the poor man had much room in his heart for God. Then they both died, and Jesus tells us the rich man was totally unprepared for the day of this death and was greatly tormented, but that the poor man was taken up to be with God and found great comfort in the presence of God (Luke 17:25).

I’m not sure at all that this story is about wealth and poverty. I think it is about living truly human lives, living in the mind and spirit of the One who created us. I believe it is about living without walls and in a community where everybody is somebody simply because they are God’s creation, and not because of what they can or can’t bring to the community.

After it was too late the wealthy man had a spiritual epiphany. Too bad he didn’t have it when out of his abundance he could have made a difference in the life of another human being. Maybe that’s why Jesus told the story, to remind us that we still have time -- We still have time to bring the grace of God into our world.

September 21, 2007

I can’t get away from something Phineas F. Bresee said almost a hundred years ago: “Our church is a missionary church that knows no difference between home and foreign fields--- in these days all fields are near.”[1]

“These days” for us is the beginning of the third millennium after Christ and we are, indeed, in the midst of a mission field. Bill Sullivan once said, “We have seen America go from over 200 years of a basically Christian culture to a non-Christian culture that rejects the foundational principles of Christianity.”[2] Add to that, if you would, the words of Kennon Callahan: “The day of the churched culture is gone, the day of the mission field has come; the day of the institutional church is past, the day of the mission outpost has arrived; the day of the professional minister is over, the day of the missional pastor is here.”[3]

Suddenly we are confronted with realities that, in the human outlook, are overwhelming, and we are brought face to face with the fact that the work of Jesus in this world is of a spiritual nature that cannot be accomplished separate from Him.

Our greatest need is leaders, who, living in the power of the Holy Spirit and under the anointing of God, will look at our mission field through the eyes of Missionary passion, enter into the arena, pray until God is freely shaping and forming their lives, and then seek to seize the day for Christ.

If not now, when? If not us, who? [4]
------------------------------------
[1] Robert Scott, Next Door and Down the Freeway (Beacon Hill: Kansas City, 2001), 94
[2] Ibid., 11
[3] Ibid., 11 – 12
[4] Taken out of context, from President Ronald Reagan's Second inaugural address, Jan. 21, 1985

Can you love someone so fully and passionately that every other relationship pales in comparison to the one whose love has captivated your life? This is what Jesus asks of us. He calls us to love Him so fully that love for those who mean the most to us in this world (father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, even our own lives) pales in comparison.

So it is Jesus warns us to “calculate the cost” of what it means to follow Him, to be His disciple (Luke 14:28). In fact, he says, “Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple” (Luke 14:27). As if that isn’t enough He continues, “None of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his own possessions” (Luke 14:33).

No warm fuzzy feelings here. We’re talking about commitment. We’re talking about laying down our lives. We’re talking about climbing up on the altar and giving Jesus everything thing we have -- our time, our talents, and our treasures. We’re talking about not holding back but about giving everything to God. We’re talking about being sold out to God, hook, line and sinker. Total commitment.

Still want to follow Jesus? Think about it. “Calculate the cost” because, make no mistake about it, it will cost you. Do you love your father? Love Jesus more. Do you love your mother? Love Jesus more? Do you love your wife, your husband? Love Jesus more. Do you love your brothers and sisters? Love Jesus more. Do you love yourself? Love Jesus more.

Ready to sign on the dotted line? Good! Sign it in blood, then take up your cross and follow Jesus into the greatest life you could ever possibly image.

Jesus does it all backwards, doesn't He? In the natural order of things people seek appreciation, honor, respect. We want thank yous and well dones, and atta boys. Recognition is important and acknowledgment means everything.

Then Jesus comes along and throws everything into disarray, challenging just about every system that has ever been important to people. He turns self-exaltation on its ear and exalts humility over pride. He calls us to take our place at the back of the line and to find fellowship with "the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind" (Luke 14:13).

Somebody once said that all the ground is level at the foot of the cross. It's true. In a way that boggles the imagination God receives us all. There are no haves or have-nots in the kingdom of God, just folks who needed and received the grace of God. No pushing and shoving allowed. Not one-up-man-ship accepted. Better-than-thou thinking has no place, and everybody is somebody because Jesus is Lord.

The community of Jesus should be that one place where true equality is practiced and where persons as persons are received and treated with the dignity that being created in the image of God demands. In this community we must not push and shove on each other as we make our way to the top. Instead, we ought to be navigating our way to the back of the line, knowing that there we will meet Jesus.

It is not in the place of honor we find Christ. It is in the place of service, the place where Jesus puts us, that we are able most meaningfully to fellowship with the One who died that we may live. If they want us up front, they will call us. And, don't wait around the phone waiting for the call. Just, show up for Jesus today, and let your light shine. He will take care of everything else.

On the way to Jerusalem to suffer and die Jesus fielded a question. An onlooker asked Him, “Lord, are there just a few who are being saved” (Luke 13:22)? Typical of Jesus He didn’t give a direct answer. Instead, He answered the larger question at hand, and challenged his listeners to look inward and find out where they stood in relation to “being saved.”

The issue is not how many or how few are “being saved,” but where does each of us stand in relation to the One who saves. How many or how few is beyond the scope of our authority. Only God can save. Therefore, Jesus poignantly speaks to the human heart when He says, “Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able” (Luke 13:25).

His call to strive catches us off guard a bit, doesn’t it? After all isn’t grace free? Isn’t mercy free? What does strive have to do with what is free? It is an intriguing thought isn’t it but, perhaps, Jesus is calling us not to be so overly preoccupied with what is or isn’t happening in the lives of others and, instead, is calling us to “work out…our salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12).

Maybe it is when we are so mesmerized by the Lord God ourselves and so enthralled by His life that the head count doesn’t really matter, that we are most in tune with the One who saves. The issue before us is to truly live before God, not in vocabulary and religious expression, but really, truly, live in the very life of God.

We might be surprised when we get to heaven to see who is there and who is not. After all, Jesus said, “Some are last who will be first and some are first who will be last” (Luke 13:30). I’m not sure what this means but it takes me back to His call to strive. This Christian life is serious business.

Jesus comes to us as the Prince of peace but He comes to us knowing His ways are not embraced by everyone. So, this One who is of peace also has a way about Him of bringing division (Luke 12:51). There is something about Jesus that leads people either to love Him or hate Him. There doesn't seem to be much of a middle ground. To some He is "foolishness" and "a stumbling block," and to some He is "the power of God and the wisdom of God" (I Cor. 1:18, 23-24).

This seems troubling on the surface -- the One of Peace bringing division. I suppose Truth has a way of dividing people. Particularly when one brings into the world the very life of God, it can get very dangerous. Holiness does not abide well with unholiness. Holiness and unholiness are worlds in conflict so much so that when the perfect one came among us the only thing we knew to do with Him was to crucify Him. That's how unholiness handles holiness. Kill it.

What must not be seen in this is a false understanding that Jesus legitimizes violence in the name of God. He simply does not. He is calling people into the very life of God, a life of Christlikeness. True, discipleship to a view other than the dominant view may invoke violence on the part of the one who is not comfortable with what Jesus is doing. However, the division must never come from within the heart of the follower of Jesus.

If the life of Jesus in His followers is, indeed, repulsive to those who don't believe in Jesus, so be it. However, in the end, His followers are still spokespersons for the kingdom of God, and the kingdom of God is about mercy, forgiveness and love. We simply do not have time for violence because violence does not accomplish the will of God.

The Bible says, "the kingdom of God is…righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit" (Rom. 14:17). As Jesus-indwelled people this is who we are, this is how we live. Let violence come from somewhere else.

“Treasure” is an interesting word. According to whom you read it could mean anything from money to wealth to affluence to assets to capital, or to possessions,” to list just a few definitions. I think words like values and priorities should be on the list, too.” Whatever the most correct definition might be, however, Jesus says our heart will be where our treasure is.

He says this in the context of passionately calling us to make God the one treasure before whom all other treasures bow. He asks us to truly believe that because the Father has been pleased to give us the kingdom (Luke 12:32) we, in turn, choose to live and move and have our being in the things of the Father. He is calling us to build our lives on the eternal, with the promise that do so is to build our lives on that which cannot be taken from us.

If our hearts will be where our treasure is then it really matters, doesn’t it, where our treasure is? What do we value? Our hearts will be there, and where our hearts are our lives will follow. For what or whom do we live? Each of us has an answer, and the answer is profoundly important to us.

As disciples of Jesus Christ may each of us set apart Christ as Lord of our lives (I Pet. 3:15). There are too many moths and too much rust, and too many thieves in the world to stake our lives on fortunes that have value only in terms of this-world value systems. There is more to life than meets the eye, and Jesus enables us to see that which is more.

Let us take what have been given to us and place it under the authority of the One who is the Giver of “every good and perfect gift” (James 1:16). Let’s give God our time, our talents and our treasures and then trust His faithfulness for both this world and the world to come.

August 5, 2007

Talk about a low blow. A certain man had finally made it to the top. He had more money than you could believe, and he was on top of the world. Then, wouldn't you know it, he up and died. Wealthy beyond belief and dead as a door nail. Bummer.

Jesus tells us this story in the context of a request made of Him that He felt was a question coming from greed. To the request He said, "Be on your guard against all kinds of greed," He said; "a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions" (Luke 12:15). And, once again, in telling a story Jesus gets us to thinking.

The man in Jesus story was engaged in three conversations, though he only knew about two of them. He was engaged in a conversation with his wealth that led him to tear down his barns and build bigger ones. He was engaged in a conversation with himself in which he concluded that he truly was fortunate to be so wealthy, so fortunate that it was time for him to "take life easy; eat, drink and be merry" (vs.19). Then he was engaged in a conversation with God, a conversation that had been put on hold in the midst of coming to the place in life where he could eat, drink and be merry. In the end the only conversation that really mattered was the one that had been put on hold.

Jesus' story leads us to see that when things of this life trump eternal things, we enter into very dangerous territory. When things of this life interfere with our conversation with God and distract us from living examined lives, we are on a collision course with outcomes for which we are totally unprepared, outcomes like dying and death.

Jesus says we are fools if we don't work into our self-talk and our plans the fact that we are going to die. We don't need to be overly preoccupied with it but we need to face it, and plan for it. Our stuff is temporary; our lives are forever.

Prayer is an intriguing gift of God to His people. It’s intriguing because as finite and imperfect beings we never know exactly and precisely how to pray. We are limited in knowledge and insight so all we can do is pray as we best know how, leaving the answering of prayer to God.

At the same time, Jesus does give us insight into how to pray. Better yet, He gives us insight into the God to whom we pray. Jesus tells us to come to Him as Father (Luke 11:2). We pour out our hearts to our Father whose name is “hallowed” and, we say to Him, “Your kingdom come.” (vs. 2).

What better way to pray than to ask the One who loves us and the One whom we love, for His kingdom to come and to be realized in this world. We may not be insightful enough to fully grasp a correct way to pray but the Father whose name is hallowed in our midst and whose will is “good, pleasing and perfect” (Romans 12:2) can be trusted fully and without hesitation.

Jesus calls us to trust the Father. Trust Him for each day’s provision (vs. 3). Trust Him to embrace us in forgiveness as we embrace others in forgiveness (4). Trust Him never to lead us into temptation (4). He is the Father. He can be trusted.

When you are in need or represent someone who is, pray, and don’t stop. Ask the Father. Seek for the Father’s intervention. Knock at the Father’s door in the sense of desperation. The Father will draw near, and bring to pass His “good, pleasing, and perfect” will.

Don’t trust your instincts or what you think the answer to your prayers ought to look like. Instead, trust the Father whose heart is compassionately open to His people.

It was in the heat of the day and the nomad, Abraham, was setting at the entrance to his tent, probably trying to beat the heat. For unannounced reasons he looked up and saw three men standing nearby. The Bible says to us the Lord was in those three men, and Abraham knew it. How he knew it, we don't know, but he knew he was in the midst of a divine appointment of some kind. Extending great hospitality to the strangers, and making sure their needs were met, Abraham listened.

The men asked him where his wife was. Abraham told them and then heard a message that would change his life. In the personhood of these three men, "the Lord said, 'I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son'" (Genesis 18:10).

Sarah overheard the conversation and laughed out loud when she heard about the year she was to have. Abraham was old and Sarah was well past childbearing age. Some things just evoke laughter when you hear them, I suppose.

We know the story. Some nine months later Sarah gave birth to the promised son. Isaac took his place in the unfolding plan of God, and the stage was set for God's remarkable grace.

Don't try to explain it scientifically; you'll come up short. Just receive it as an act of God who speaks creatively into history, and works in ways that leave the human intellect awed and amazed. The question is asked by the Lord to Abraham, "Is anything too hard for the Lord" (Vs. 14). The birth of Isaac gives us the answer.

As the people of God in Christ it wouldn't be a bad devotional action to ask our selves once in a while, "Is anything too hard for God?" The answer will always be NO. Still, there is a lot of Sarah in us, isn't there. And, sometimes it's hard to believe that with God all things are possible.

Believe it, though, because God is in the midst.

Jesus asked an expert in Jewish law how he read the law concerning how to “inherit eternal life” (Luke 10: 25). The answer given was pleasing to Jesus: “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself self” (Luke 10:27).

The expert wasn’t satisfied with Jesus approval, however, and, “wanting to justify himself,” (whatever that means), (vs.29), asked Jesus to explain to him exactly who qualifies as being a neighbor. Here Jesus gives what has come to be the well-known parable of the Good Samaritan.

A man is robbed, severely injured, and abandoned along a roadside. A priest and a Levite happen by and upon seeing the suffering man choose to move to the other side of the road and not make him a part of their life. Then a Samaritan, (an unappreciated and hated fellow from the other side of the tracks) happens by. And, wouldn’t you know it, he stops, extends mercy, tends to the suffering man’s needs, takes him to a motel, cleans him up, and pays the manager of the motel enough money to cover a couple of days expenses, with the promise that upon his return he would also pay for any other expenses incurred by the victim.

Then the parable takes a twist. Jesus asked, “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers” (vs. 36)? His point wasn’t that the victim was the neighbor in need of help. The victim simply gave opportunity to reveal what a good neighbor is like. The neighbor is the Samaritan “who had mercy” on the victim. To this Jesus said, “Go and do likewise” (vs. 37).

What do followers of Jesus look like? Jesus says they look like this Samaritan fellow who when he could have moved to the other side of the road, also, chose, instead, to extend mercy. “Go,” Jesus said, “and do likewise.”