Work In Progress

 

Work in Progress

Work In Progress - Audio/Visual 

God began doing a good work in you, and I am sure he will continue it until it is finished when Jesus Christ comes again. (Philippians 1:6).

The hallway is eerily silent except for the squeaky wheels of the mop bucket and the shuffling of the old man’s feet. Both sound tired, and both know these floors. “How many nights have I cleaned these floors,” Rick mumbles. He’s always careful to get in the corners, though. Always careful to set up his yellow caution sign warning of the wet floors – even though no one’s around. Always chuckling, “Be careful everyone,” he says to no one in particular. It’s 3:00 a.m.

Rick’s health isn’t what it used to be. Acid reflux keeps him awake, and rheumatoid arthritis makes him limp. His hair’s falling out of his head at the same rate other hair is sprouting in places where hair shouldn’t be sprouting. His glasses are so thick his eyeballs look twice their size, but he does his work. Slopping soapy water on the pristine travertine tile – scrubbing the heel marks left by the well-heeled lawyers of Bicker, Back & Forth.

He’ll be finished long before quitting time. He always finishes early – has for twenty years. And when he’s finished, he’ll put away his mop and bucket and take a seat outside the office of the senior partner and wait. Never leaves early. Oh, he could if he wanted to – no one would ever know. But he doesn’t. He broke the rules once; never again. And sometimes, if the door’s open, he’ll enter the partner’s palatial office. Not for long, of course; just to take a look. The office suite is larger than his entire apartment. He runs his finger over the desk and strokes the soft leather couch. He stands at the window and watches as the gray sky turns to gold and he remembers: he had an office like that once.

But that was back in the day. Back when Rick was Richard. Back when this custodian was an executive. Back when …. Well, it seems centuries ago now. Long before the night shift. Long before the mop bucket. Long before the janitor’s uniform. Long before the scandal. But Rick doesn’t think about it much anymore. No reason to, really. He got into trouble, got fired and got out. That’s it. Few people know about it. It’s better that way. There’s no need to tell them. It’s just his little secret. Rick’s story, by the way, is true. The names and a detail or two have been changed to protect the innocent. He’s in a different job in a different century. But the story is factual. But more than a true story, it’s a common story. It’s a story of a derailed dream. It’s a story of high hopes colliding with harsh realities. It happens to all us dreamers.

In Rick’s case, it was a mistake he’d never forget. A grave mistake. A capital offense kind of mistake. You see, Rick killed someone. He saw a thug beating up on an innocent man, and Rick lost control. He killed the mugger. And when word got out, Rick got out. Rick would rather hide than go to jail. So, he ran. And in the process, the executive became a fugitive. True story. Granted, most stories aren’t quite as extreme as Rick’s. Few spend their lives running from the law. But many of us live with regrets, don’t we? For instance, I met a young man on the fourth tee several years ago. “I could have gone to college on a golf scholarship,” he said. “Really?” I asked. “Yeah, I had an offer right out of school. But I decided to join a grunge band, instead. Ended up never going to college. Now I’m stuck fixing garage doors.”

“Now I’m stuck.” Now, there’s an epitaph. An epitaph of a derailed dream. Pick up any high school yearbook and read the “What are you going to do after you graduate?” section. Chances are you’ll get dizzy breathing the thin air of mountaintop visions: “I’m going to an Ivy league school,” one says. “Write books and live in Switzerland,” says another “I’m going to be a doctor in a third world country,” she writes. “Teach inner-city kids,” he said. But take that same yearbook to your 20^th high school reunion and see the next chapter. Some dreams have come true, but many haven’t. Not that all of them should, mind you. For instance, I hope the little guy who dreamed of playing professional basketball came to his senses. But then again, I hope he didn’t lose his passion in the process. You see, changing direction in life is not tragic. But losing your passion is.

It seems like something happens to us along the way. Convictions to change the world morph into commitments to pay the bills. Rather than making a difference, we make a living. Instead of looking forward, we look backward. Rather than looking outward, we look inward. And sometimes we don’t like what we see. Rick didn’t. Rick saw a man who’d settled for mediocrity. Educated in the finest institutions in the world, and now working the night shift at a minimum-wage job so he wouldn’t be seen during the day. But all that changed when he heard the voice.

At first, he thought the voice was a joke. Some of the fellows on the third floor play those kinds of tricks every once in a while. “Richard, Richard,” the voice called. Rick turned. No one called him Richard anymore. “Richard, Richard.” He turned toward the pail, and it was glowing. Bright red. Hot red. He could feel the heat ten feet away. He stepped closer and looked in, but the water wasn’t boiling. “That’s strange,” Rick mumbled to himself as he took another step to get a closer look. But then the voice stopped him. “Don’t come any closer, Richard. Take your shoes off. You’re on holy tile.” Suddenly, Rick knew exactly who was speaking. “Yes, Lord,” he said. Okay, God speaking from a hot mop bucket to a janitor named Rick? Really? But would it be more believable if I said God was speaking from a burning bush to a goat roper named Moses?

“One day Moses was taking care of Jethro’s flock. (Jethro was the priest of Midian and also Moses’ father-in-law.)  When Moses led the flock to the west side of the desert, he came to Sinai, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire coming out of a bush. Moses saw that the bush was on fire, but it was not burning up. So, he said, ‘I will go closer to this strange thing. How can a bush continue burning without burning up?’ When the Lord saw Moses was coming to look at the bush, God called to him from the bush, ‘Moses, Moses!’ And Moses said, ‘Here I am.’ Then God said, ‘Do not come any closer. Take off your sandals because you are standing on holy ground. I am the God of your ancestors – the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ The Lord said … ‘I have heard the cries of the people of Israel, and I have seen the way the Egyptians have made life hard for them. So now I am sending you to the king of Egypt. Go! Bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt!’” (Exodus 3:1-6, 9-10)

Maybe the Moses story is easier to handle because we’ve heard it before. But just because it’s Moses and a bush, rather than Rick and a bucket, it’s no less spectacular, is it? It shocked the sandals off of Moses. And we wonder what amazed the old guy more: that God spoke in a bush, or that God spoke at all because Moses, like Rick, had made a mistake. A big mistake.

You remember the story, don’t you? He was adopted nobility. An Israelite reared in an Egyptian palace. His countrymen were slaves, but Moses was privileged. He ate at the royal table. He was educated in the finest schools. Funny thing is that his most influential teacher had no degree at all. She was his mother – a Jewess hired to be his nanny. “Moses,” you can almost hear her whisper to her young son. “God has put you here for a reason. Someday, you’ll set our people free. Never forget, my son. Never forget.” And Moses didn’t. The flame of justice grew hotter until it blazed. Moses saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew slave. And just like Rick killed the mugger, Moses killed the Egyptian and then buried him. The next day Moses saw the slave and you’d think the slave would have said, “Thanks.” But he didn’t. Rather than gratitude, he was angry. “Are you going to kill me, too?” he asked. And Moses knew right then that he was in serious trouble. So, he fled Egypt and hid in the wilderness. Call it a career change. He went from dining with heads of state to counting the heads of sheep.

Moses thought the move was permanent – there’s no indication that he ever intended to go back to Egypt. In fact, there is every indication he wanted to stay with the sheep. Standing barefoot before the bush, he confessed, “I am not a great man! How can I go to the king and lead the Israelites out of Egypt?” (Exodus 3:11). And I’m glad Moses asked that question because why him? Why Moses? Better yet, why eighty-year-old Moses? The forty-year-old version was way more appealing. The Moses we saw in Egypt was brash and confident, but the Moses we find some four decades later is reluctant and weather-beaten. Had you or I looked at Moses back in Egypt, we would’ve said, “This guy’s ready to rumble.” Trained by the ablest soldiers and instant access to the inner circle of the Pharaoh. Moses spoke their language and knew their habits. He was the perfect man for the job.

The Moses at forty we like. But the Moses at eighty? Not so much. He’s too old. He’s too tired. He smells like a shepherd. He speaks like a foreigner. What impact could Moses possibly have on Pharaoh? He’s the wrong guy for the job. And even Moses would have agreed. “Tried that once before,” he’d say. “Those people don’t want to be helped. Just leave me here to tend my sheep, God. They’re a whole lot easier to lead.” Moses wouldn’t have gone, and we wouldn’t have sent him. But God did. Go figure. Benched at forty and suited up at eighty. Why? What does Moses know now that he didn’t know then? What did he learn in the desert that he didn’t learn in Egypt?

The ways of the desert, for one. Forty-year-old Moses was a city boy, while octogenarian Moses knows the name of every snake, and the location of every watering hole. And if he’s going to lead hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of Hebrews away from Egypt and into the wilderness, he’d better know the basics of Desert Life 101. And family dynamics, for another. If he’s going to be traveling with thousands of families for forty years, it might help just a little bit to understand how families work. Of course, by this time, he’s been married a long time to a woman of faith, the daughter of a Midianite priest, and has kids of his own. He’s a family man.

But more than the ways of the desert and the people, Moses needed to learn something about himself. And now, apparently, he’d learned it because God said that Moses was ready. So, to convince him, God spoke to Moses through a bush because God had to do something drastic to get his attention. God works that way sometimes. ”School’s out,” God told him. “Now, get to work.” Poor Moses. He didn’t even know he was enrolled in school, much less a graduate.

But he was, and so are we. The voice from the bush is the voice that whispers to each of us. It reminds us that God’s not finished with us yet. Oh, we may think he is. We may think we’ve peaked out. We may think he’s got someone else to do the job. But if that’s what we’re thinking then we need to think again because we’re all unfinished. “God began doing a good work in you, and I am sure he will continue it until it is finished when Jesus Christ comes again.” (Philippians 1:6) See what God is doing? He’s doing a good work in you. (Present tense) And did you hear when he’ll be finished? When Jesus comes again. (Future tense) In other words, we’re all unfinished.

Your Father wants you to know that you’re a work in progress. Your present hasn’t met your ultimate future. And to convince you, he may just surprise you. He works that way, you know. He may speak through a bush. He could even speak through a bucket. The question is, are you listening?

Grace,

Randy

Coming Home

 

Coming Home

Coming Home - Audio/Visual 

              When Naomi saw that Ruth had her heart set on going with her, she gave in. And so, the two of them traveled on together (back) to Bethlehem. (Ruth 1:18-19)

It was a small house, simple but adequate: one large room on a dusty street. Its red-tiled roof was one of many in this extremely poor neighborhood on the outskirts of a Brazilian village. But it was a comfortable home. Maria and her daughter, Christina, had done what they could to add color to the gray walls and warmth to the hard dirt floor: an old calendar here, a faded photograph of a relative over there, a wooden crucifix. The furnishings were modest, too – a pallet on the other side of the room, a washbasin and a wood-burning stove. Maria’s husband had died when Christina was just a baby. The young mother, stubbornly refusing opportunities to remarry, got a job and set out to raise her young daughter by herself. And now, fifteen years later, the worst years were over, or so she thought. Though Maria’s salary as a maid afforded few luxuries, it was a reliable job and paid well enough to provide for their food and clothing. And now Christina was old enough to get a job so she could help out.

Some said Christina got her independence from her mother, but she bristled at the traditional idea of marrying young, like her mother, and raising a family. Not that she couldn’t have had her pick of husbands, mind you. Her olive brown skin and big, brown eyes kept a steady stream of potential suitors always at the door. And she had an infectious way of throwing her head back and filling the room with laughter. She also had that rare magic some women have that makes every man feel like a king just by being near them. But it was her high-spirited curiosity that made her keep all the men at arm’s length, at least for a time. Christina spoke often of going to the “Big City.” She dreamed of trading in her dusty, grimy neighborhood for the exciting avenues and bright lights of city life. Of course, the thought of this absolutely horrified her mother. Maria was always quick to remind Christina of the harshness and brutality of the big-city streets. “People don’t know you there. Jobs are scarce, and life is cruel. And besides, if you went there, what would you do for a living?”

Maria knew exactly what Christina would do, or – worse yet – would have to do for a living. That’s why her heart broke when she awoke one morning to find her daughter’s empty bed. Maria knew in an instant where her daughter had gone. She also knew what she had to do to find her. So, Maria quickly threw some clothes in a bag, gathered up all her money, and ran out of the house. On her way to the bus stop she entered a drugstore to get one last thing: pictures. Maria sat in the photograph booth, closed the curtain and spent all she could on pictures of herself. Then, with her purse full of small black-and-white photographs, she boarded the next bus to the “Big City” – Rio de Janeiro.

Maria knew Christina had no way of earning money. She also knew that her daughter was too stubborn to give up on her dreams of big-city life. Maria knew that when pride meets hunger, a human will do things that … well … were unthinkable before. Knowing this, Maria began her search. Bars, hotels, nightclubs, any place with a reputation for streetwalkers. She went to every last one of them. And at each place she left her picture. Pictures were taped on a bathroom mirror, or tacked to a hotel bulletin board, or even fastened to a corner phone booth. And on the back of each photo, she wrote a note.

It wasn’t long before both her money and the pictures ran out, and Maria had to go home. Weary and heartsick, Maria put her head in her hands and quietly wept as the bus began its long journey back to the small village. Meanwhile, it was only a few weeks later that young Christina descended the hotel stairs. Her face, once so young and full of life, was now tired and lifeless. Her brown eyes no longer danced with youth but spoke of pain and fear. Her laughter, which once filled a room, was broken and empty. Her dream of big-city life had become her worst nightmare, and her heart ached a thousand times over to trade those countless beds for her secure pallet. Yet her little village was, in so many ways, all but a distant a memory. As she reached the bottom of the stairs, Christina’s eyes noticed a familiar face. She looked again, and there on the lobby mirror was a small black-and-white picture of her mother. Christina’s eyes burned and her throat tightened as she walked across the room and removed the small photo. And written on the back of the picture was her mother’s note: “Whatever you have done, whatever you have become, it doesn’t matter. Please come home.” And Christina did.

The story of Ruth is many things, but at its core it’s the story of a believer coming home. Naomi has been a long way from home, but even farther from God. Now we find Naomi coming home, coming back to God. In fact, you can almost hear Naomi saying, “What a waste of time! I followed my husband and my two sons to the desert on some wild goose-chase and look where it’s gotten me? They’re dead, and I’m alone. Terrific.” But then, like a shaft of light coming through a cloud-strewn dawn, she thinks, “But I can go home. There’s certainly nothing keeping me here anymore. The promises of food and success have vaporized, just like my joy. And the dream of a life that I thought I would share forever with a husband and my boys who loved me has died with them. Now I’m alone, but I can still go home. Yeah, I’ll just turn around and go home. Lord, I’m coming home.” In Naomi, we see a pretty stark example of failure. We see her bitter experiences of being far away from God. But we also see a wonderful example of forgiveness. We see in Naomi the blessings we can experience when we set our hearts for home.

Ten years have passed since Naomi left Bethlehem-Judah with her husband and two sons. (Ruth 1:4) Now, a decade later, she’s coming home. But it’s a bittersweet homecoming. The home and family she had in Bethlehem are all but a distant memory, and she ponders her return to a place where she has nowhere to live, no place to work and no one to come home to. Oh, she has Ruth all right, but it’s still not the same. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, Naomi knows that “There’s no place like home.” So, she turns her face for Bethlehem. And let’s face it, Naomi made a bad decision when she left Bethlehem. But she wasn’t stuck. Instead, Naomi used her experience and bad decisions as a prompt to make a good decision – to go back home to the Bethlehem and God that she once knew. Bethlehem was in the land of Judah, which means “praise,” and Bethlehem was the place where God was glorified and honored. It was the place where God was praised and exalted. Naomi was returning to that place where God’s presence was very real. Moab, she remembered, beckoned with promise, but it proved nothing more than a mirage when she arrived. Bethlehem, on the other hand, was a place where God’s presence was palpable. Not that the famine, which drove Naomi away from God in the first place, did anything to make her feel God in a more personal way. But now, in the desert, God’s absence was overwhelming; a darkness so thick that you could cut it with a knife. A suffocating darkness. A darkness that, with a little light, could be dispelled. Naomi had to get back to that place where she could be in God’s presence once again, and experience, first-hand, God’s loving-kindness.

When we’re away from God, our lives are barren of God’s blessings. It’s like that Mother Goose nursery rhyme, “Old Mother Hubbard.” Remember the story? She had plenty of cupboards, but they were all empty. She didn’t even have a bone for her dog. In other words, our “vacation” away from God is not the tourist destination it was cracked up to be. It’s barren; it’s empty; it’s alone. But it’s hard to come home, isn’t it? Oh, the coming home part is easy enough, but what will happen to me when I return? Worse yet, how angry is God going to be when he sees me? Just like a teenager, we’ve stayed out past curfew, broken the rules and thumbed our nose at authority. Now, Dad’s really going to get me.

Satan has that argument down pat; he uses it all the time. You know the one, “You’re a loser, you had your chance, you’ve really screwed up this time and you’ll never see God at work in your life, ever again.” Or “You’ve got one chance in this life and boy did you blow it!” The fact is that Satan’s a liar. He’s the father of lies. (John 8:44) So, why would you believe the father of lies? That would be like you believing that I had ocean front property in El Centro to sell you. The truth is that when we come home, we will find a forgiving God that will make himself known in our lives. He wants to be known, so why would he turn you away?

Naomi knew that Bethlehem was a place of God’s people. It was a place of kindred spirits and like-minded souls. In fact, you can probably think of someone that used to be in church and their seat was never empty; it was like they owned the pew. But now, that same person, or maybe family, is not only out of fellowship with God, but out of the fellowship of God. Prove it to yourself. Next Sunday, look around and see if you can’t spot an empty pew that was once filled by Mr. or Ms. Dependable. When Naomi got home, the people who knew her were shocked to see her. “Is this our Naomi,” they said? (Ruth 1:9) And then notice her answer: “Don’t call me Naomi; call me Bitter.” (v. 9) Naomi goes from “Mrs. Pleasant” to Mara, “Ms. Bitter.” In a word, Naomi testifies to the results and consequences of leaving God.

And isn’t it interesting that Naomi comes home during the spring? (v. 22) Coincidence, I guess. It was the time of the barley harvest, which is about the same time as Passover. A time of first fruits; a time for starting over; a time for forgiveness; a time when new life comes to bloom. And it can be springtime for you, too. You can come home, you know. You’ve seen the picture, haven’t you? You know, the colored photos of God you see plastered all over the place? And you’ve even read your Father’s message on the back, haven’t you? Yeah, that one. The one that says, “Whatever you’ve done, whatever you’ve become, it doesn’t matter. Please come home.”

Chinese philosopher, Lao-tzu said, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” So, go ahead. Turn your heart toward home. Take that first step because God still has your picture on his fridge.

Grace,

Randy

The Crazy Convert

 

The Crazy Convert

The Crazy Convert - Audio/Visual 

Jesus and his followers went to the other side of the lake to the area of the Gerasene people. When Jesus got out of the boat, instantly a man with an evil spirit came to him from the burial caves. This man lived in the caves, and no one could tie him up, not even with a chain. Many times people had used chains to tie the man's hands and feet, but he always broke them off. No one was strong enough to control him. Day and night he would wander around the burial caves and on the hills, screaming and cutting himself with stones. (Mark 5:1-5)

Here’s a trivia question: Who was the first missionary Jesus ever sent? Someone well trained, perhaps? You know, a person who had an intimate relationship with Christ. Or maybe it was a devoted follower, a close disciple or someone with a thorough knowledge of Scripture and sacrifice. Stumped? Here’s a hint: to find this guy, you don't have to go to the Great Commission. He’s not even on the short list of apostles, or one of the seventy-two disciples sent out by Jesus. Maybe the epistles, then? No. Long before Paul picked up a pen, this preacher was already at work. Okay, so where did Jesus go to find his first missionary? He went to the cemetery. And who was the first ambassador he commissioned? A raving lunatic. The man Jesus sent out was a madman turned missionary.

He's the man your mother told you to avoid. He's the guy police put on a §5150 hold. He's the deranged lunatic who stalks neighborhoods and murders families. His fearsome face and behavior fills television screens nationwide during the nightly news. And this guy is the very first missionary of the church. Terrific. Palestine didn't know what to do with him. They tried to restrain him, but he broke the chains. He ripped off his clothes. He lived in caves. He cut himself with rocks. He was a rabid dog on the loose; a menace to society. He was absolutely no good to anyone. No one had a place for him. Well, no one except for Jesus. By today’s standards, the best that modern medicine could offer a guy like that would be a ton of psychotropic meds, and years of psychotherapy. And maybe, with time, thousands of dollars and a legion of professionals, his destructive behaviors could be kept in check. But that would take years, and there’d be no guarantee of success. With Jesus, it took seconds and the man was permanently healed.

The encounter at the lakeshore was probably pretty explosive. The disciples' boat had just beached by a graveyard and a nearby herd of pigs. The disciples are exhausted from the previous nights’ events – when they’d almost drowned until Jesus calmed the storm on the Sea of Galilee. Now, they’re in Gentile country where graveyards and pigs are ritually and culturally unclean for Jews. So you can imagine their astonishment when they’re met by a crazy man sprinting toward them from a graveyard. Wild hair; bloody wrists; arms flailing and voice screaming; pure, naked bedlam. The apostles gawk, then they gulp, and then they put one foot back into the boat – maybe both. They’re horrified. But Jesus isn't. And the next few verses provide a glimpse into unseen warfare where, for just a moment, the invisible conflict becomes visible, and we, along with the disciples, are offered a position overlooking the battlefield.

Jesus speaks first: "You evil spirit, come out of the man." (Mark 5:8) The spirit panics: "What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?" (v. 7) Jesus wants the man back, of course. And the demons muster absolutely no challenge whatsoever. They don’t even offer a threat. They've heard this voice before, and when God demands, the demons have only one response: they plead.

So, they "begged Jesus again and again not to send them out of that area." (Mark 5:10) Jesus' mere appearance humbled the demons. Though they had dominated this man, they cower before God. Though they had laced an entire region with fear, they now beg for mercy. Jesus’ words reduce them to sniveling, groveling weaklings. So, feeling safer in a herd of pigs than in the presence of God, the demons ask to be sent into the swine. Jesus consents and two thousand demon-possessed pigs hurl themselves into the sea and drown, and all the while the disciples do absolutely nothing. While Jesus fights, the followers stare because they don't know what else to do. Can you relate? Do you watch a world out of control and don't know what to do? If so, do what the disciples did: when the fighting gets fierce, stand back and let the Father fight.

In 1963, my father and I were in the back of an ambulance racing the two of us, including my unconscious mother, to the hospital. We’d just been involved in a head-on collision with a VW Bug driven by a mom who’d crossed over a double-yellow line as she turned to hand her kids some McDonald’s hamburgers over the back seat. We were driving in my parents’ brand new car – a sea-foam green, Ford Falcon. One minute I was coloring Lassie with a silver crayon, and the next I was slammed into the back of the front seat so hard that I broke my arm. Mom and Dad weren’t quite as lucky. Mom was unconscious with a broken jaw, and Dad, among other injuries, had a huge gash in his shin.

Aside from a 5 year-old’s excitement riding in the back of an ambulance racing through red lights, I kept asking my Dad if Mom was alright. But as the seconds passed into minutes, the excitement of going through red lights with sirens blaring was beginning to wear off. It was beginning to dawn on me that Mom was more than just asleep, and that Dad was struggling to remain calm while wrestling with his pain and the safety of his wife and kindergartner. I was beginning to wonder if we were going to make it.

So there’s my Dad – one hand on his wife and the other clutching his leg which had blown up to gargantuan proportions. I was in front looking back. Toward him. Tears are starting to fall. The race against time seems to worsen as the sirens scream. I’m headed to a location where I’ve never been, experiencing a degree of pain I’d never felt, talking with my Dad whose voice doesn’t sound the same, and a mother who’s not talking at all. I grab both sides of the railing and hang on for dear life. Where’s that hospital, anyway? It's buried by a blur of traffic. So, I look for my coloring book . . . . Oh, it’s still in the smoldering Falcon. I look for something familiar and all I see is paramedic and doctor stuff. Everything I see frightens me. There’s only one reassuring sight – the face of my father.

Pain-wrecked and grimacing, he looks ahead with a steely stare. His shirt is stuck to his skin, and his hands are stuck to his wife. And right then I made a decision. I quit looking at the stop lights, the traffic, the medical supplies, my mother’s unconscious face, and just watched my father. It just made sense. Watching everything around me brought fear; watching my father brought calm. So I focused on Dad. So intent was my gaze that six decades later I can still see him and hear him say, “It’ll be alright, Tiger; Mom’s going to be okay.”

God wants us to do the same. He wants us to focus our eyes on him. What good does it do to focus on the storm? Why study the enemy? We won't defeat him. Only God will. The disciples can't destroy Satan; only God can. And that's what Jesus did. As the stunned disciples look on, Jesus goes into action and God delivers a lunatic. Pigs are embodied by demons, and a disciple is made in a cemetery.

Crazy story? Hardly. You haven’t heard the half of it. Because if you think the reaction of the demons is bizarre, just look at the response of the people who’d come to see the train wreck in the graveyard: “The herdsmen ran away and went to the town and to the countryside, telling everyone about this. So people went out to see what had happened. They came to Jesus and saw the man who used to have the many evil spirits, sitting, clothed, and in his right mind. And they were frightened. The people who saw this told the others what had happened to the man who had the demons living in him, and they told about the pigs. Then the people began to beg Jesus to leave their area.” (Mark 5:15-17)

They did what? “The people began to beg Jesus to leave the area.” You mean the people asked Jesus to leave? Correct. Rather than thank him, they dismissed him. What would cause the people to do that? Good question. What would cause people to prefer pigs and lunatics over the presence of God? Better yet, what would cause an addict to prefer a stupor over sobriety? What would cause a church to prefer slumber over revival? What would cause a nation to prefer slavery over freedom? What would cause people to prefer yesterday's traditions over today's living God? The answer? Fear. Fear of change.

Change is hard work. It's easier to follow the same old path than to move out into uncharted territory. And here it appears that the herdsmen didn’t know what had happened to the lunatic; they only knew that their pigs tried to sprout wings and fly into a lake. All 2,000 of them. Frightened, they go into town and tell others who then, in turn, rush to the scene and see the crazy man they’d heard about now seated, clothed and perfectly sane. They’re confused. So, they share their story with the shepherds and, collectively, the townspeople conclude that what just happened is sheer madness. Insanity. As a result, the people beg Jesus to leave because, apparently, he’s the crazy one. And since Jesus never goes where he’s not invited, he steps back into the boat. But then watch what happens.

“As Jesus was getting back into the boat, the man who was freed from the demons begged to go with him. But Jesus would not let him.” (v. 18) Kind of a strange way to treat a new believer, don't you think? Why wouldn't Jesus take him along? Simple. He had greater plans for him – “Go home to your family and tell them how much the Lord has done for you and how he has had mercy on you." (v. 19) And there you have it. The commissioning of the first missionary. One minute insane, the next in Christ. No training. No teaching. No nothing. All he knew was that Jesus could scare the hell out of hell and apparently that was enough. But even more surprising than the man who was sent is the fact that anyone was sent at all. I mean, I wouldn't have sent a missionary to a bunch of people who’d just given me the bum’s rush out of town. Would you? I’d send them the plague maybe, but not a missionary. But Jesus did, and the instructions to that first missionary were pretty simple: “Go home to your family and tell them how much the Lord has done for you and how he has had mercy on you.” (Id.)

Jesus still sends the message to the unworthy, and he still uses the unworthy as messengers. So, be a missionary. Tell your story to people you know. It’s not that crazy.

Grace,

Randy