Week 51—Monday Luke 10:29-37
Luke 10:29-37
HE DID NOT DISCUSS IMMORTALITY—
HE RAISED THE DEAD
We continue looking at “the Concrete Christ.” Jesus did not discourse on the necessity of letting one’s light shine at home among kinsfolk and friends—he announced his program of uplift and healing at Nazareth, his own home, and those who heard “wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth” (Luke 4:22).
As Jesus came among us he did not try to prove the existence of God—he brought God. He lived in God, and people looking upon his face could not find it within themselves to doubt God.
He did not argue, as Socrates, the immortality of the soul—he raised the dead.
He did not speculate on how God was a Trinity—he said, “If it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Matt. 12:28). Here the Trinity—“I,” “Spirit of God,” “God”—was not something to be speculated about, but was a working force for redemption—the casting out of demons and the bringing in of the Kingdom.
He did not teach in a didactic way about the worth of children—he put his hands upon them and setting one in their midst tersely said, “To such belongs the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 19:14), and he raised them from the dead.
He did not argue that God answers prayer—he prayed, sometimes all night and in the morning “the power of the Lord was with him to heal” (Luke 5:17).
He did not paint in glowing colors the beauties of friendship and the need for human sympathy—he wept at the grave of his friend Lazarus.
He did not discuss the question of the worth of personality as we do today—he loved and saved persons.
O Jesus, Lord and Friend, we watch you in action and we see how to live. Teach us your secret, for if we do not know how to live we miss the one thing in life. So we watch you with breathless interest and our deepest devotion. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I would be saved from being interested only in personality and not in persons.