I’m in a “dry” mode as far as blogging is concerned. Nothing much going on that would interest you, so I’m going to share an insight from Sunday.
At least I’m going to try. After a 3:30 removal this morning and not getting back to sleep, I may suddenly drop to my keyboard mid-sentence. If so, you’ll know wh
Just kidding.
Mark 1, a man with leprosy came to Jesus begging for mercy and healing. “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”
You probably know the story, but if not you can read vv.40 – 45 to refresh your memory.
When I was preaching (or attempting to preach, depending on whom you ask), I loved the challenge of finding an angle or an application that I’d never seen nor heard before. Sometimes I even found that elusive angle / application without stealing it from Swindoll or Ortberg … but let’s not go there.
As our preacher walked us through the passage again this past Sunday, he gave us an angle I’d not considered. Lepers were forced to live outside the community, their disease viewed as a curse from God. When they did go into the community, they had to dress in tattered clothing, their hair unkempt, and warn others by crying loudly, “Unclean!”
For the most part, they appeared in public as would a mourner … and rightly so, for they were mourning themselves.
After Jesus healed the leper, Mark tells us, “Jesus could no longer enter a town openly but stayed outside in lonely places.”
The angle: Jesus and the leper exchanged “places” … for the leper to live in a whole community, Jesus was forced to live in lonely places.
Dave’s point on Sunday (followed by good, practical application) was that compassion is costly. But well worth the cost for the sake of Christ.
When was the last time your compassion was costly?
Not many times that it is not….unless it is not acted on. I can feel compassion and do nothing…then I just feel terrible, and it probably does have a cost to my spirit even still…..
I am in that dry blog spot too. Maybe something will hit me soon.
I know all about dry spells, been on a long one!
I always enjoy your posts and I wouldn’t have known from recent ones that you were ‘running out of words/thoughts”.
Very interesting thoughts here today, following Jesus means at times we too will experience being outside in lonely places.
I have often wondered about the lepers, the agony of the disease, the isolation and then need to be loved.
I don’t know that demonstrating compassion has ever been very costly (perhaps inconvenient) to me, but I suspect the results of compassion affect people much more deeply and profoundly than we might imagine.
Compassion has certainly cost me. It’s cost me members of my family, among other things. But, I would not change my course. I would not live other than with grace and love in my life and that means sacrifice, I think. Just as your minister, Dave, was pointing out in the lesson on Sunday.
I think you’re doing great here on your blog to be in a dry spell. I should know. I’ve not written a post in a week and a half. Right now we’re not even home, so I can’t post any more of the great photos from the contest. Bummer. Y’all would enjoy them.
Dee