Gospeling Your Life Part 4

 

 Yesterday, we shined a light on the fact that sometimes we think the point of Scripture is to identify or even become like the main character and this can leave us feeling like we have multiple personalities or are being pulled in too many directions.  One of the powers of Scripture is to return and re-read the Gospels time and time and time again.  Each time you re-visit a story, the prayer is to discover a new twist on what is as familiar as your well-worn slippers on your feet this morning.  For example, you can read the Parable of the Good Samaritan and want to be the Samaritan.  You rush out and volunteer and stop when someone is having trouble on the side of the road, because, you know, Jesus is watching!  But maybe next time, you feel depleted and deflated, more like the dude in the ditch.  Or maybe next time you realize that you can’t be the savior of everyone all the time or maybe recall that time you didn’t round up your total for charity or decided to skip your volunteer shift to go on vacation.  At some point you might wonder why are so many in the ditch - suffering and struggling, how can I help change the system?  This is one story that can provoke so many responses and reactions, all of which can be true simultaneously.  Secondly, it is good to remember that while you are contemplating the moment you passed by - someone else might feel like the one being passed by.  There are underlying, often unnamed, emotions driving our thoughts and what we say in response to Scripture.  Stories don’t try to convince you of truth by blasting and blaring statistics, they come through the backdoor of our soul.  Which means, our emotions might be the first to greet the story, before the words reach our brain.  But by the time the words do reach our mind, we want to reconcile our thoughts and feelings before we speak.  So, we use our words to say why this story, staying with the Good Samaritan, is clearly an example of do-gooder-ism run amuck in our world.  Or why this story should challenge those people (usually leaders) who aren’t doing their part.  We point out others who are passing by so maybe people don’t see where we didn’t do our part.  Or because we love to be the hero and not the dude in the ditch ever, we tend to treat him as a prop rather than a beloved child of God.  The more you turn Scripture in the palm of your hand, the more God’s light reflects and radiates through each syllable to shine/show something new and fresh.  I pray that you will go slowly through Gospels, reading not in a monotone – just get through it – way but with a curiosity of how our Creator is writing your story in your soul through these words each day.  Amen.