From the Pastor…    Can You Love a Snake?

Jesus wasn’t real loving sometimes.  He called the Pharisees vipers, snakes, whitewashed tombs.  So, you have to understand the world in which we live is dangerous. — Franklin Graham

My Bible reading on Monday carried me through Matthew 24 where Jesus said the harsh, hard things against the Pharisees that Graham refers to in the quote above.  Boy, was Jesus rough on them!  You can almost feel the intensity of disgust he had with the way they treated people.  “Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild” was not on display here.

It’s easy enough for us to come down hard on corporate, political, or religious leaders we think are doing wrong; but we all have our faults and short-comings, unlike Jesus who always gets things right when it comes to leadership and human relations.  The common people adored Jesus because he didn’t use or manipulate them.  We should never use people either.  We should use things and love people, not the other way around.

Social media contains a lot of venom expressed toward others these days.  And yet, even though it was the Pharisees and other religious leaders who got Jesus tortured and murdered, we find that Jesus loved them, too, and asked the Father to forgive them… because they didn’t know what they were doing. – Wow!

We live in a world which requires us to be on guard against the snakes that would hurt us, yet we cannot shut the door of love, even against those who would do us harm.  We live in the tension between guarding the door and opening it.

                 God’s best to you today,     

                                  Lee