May 20
62But Jesus said, “No one throwing a hand upon the plow and looking behind is fit for the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:62; The Original Gospels)
Happy Weekend Family. In the verse above, a man has approached Jesus about following Him and His disciples. The man tells Jesus that he recently had a family member pass away, and he would join Jesus’ mission once he buried the lost loved one. Jesus tells the man, “leave the dead to bury their dead.” Then another says to Jesus, “I will accompany You Lord, but first allow me to say good bye to those in my house (Luke 9:61).” To that request, Jesus instructs this second man with the verse we see above: “No one throwing a hand upon the plow and looking behind is fit for the Kingdom of God.” What Jesus is saying here, is that when you put your hand on the plow, to prepare the field for planting those seeds of the Kingdom of Heaven, if you keep looking back at your old life, your commitment to the Kingdom is not where it needs to be.
This is a daunting task. I find myself looking back more than I ever want to. There have been times in my life that I essentially walk away from the plow and head into town where all the revelry exists, looking to have a wild time with the prodigal son, waking up from a night long bender, crawling back to the plow, hungover, dehydrated, and full of shame. To be honest with y’all here, I must confess that just last night, while we were having a block party to celebrate the end of the school year, I was drinking whiskey, taking shots, and before I knew it, the last shot of alcohol did not sit in my stomach very well and I was puking my guts up on the side of the house, hoping to be in the shadows, out of sight, shameful I had allowed myself to be so intoxicated with all our neighbors, not even considering the fact that Jesus was right there beside me in the shadows of the house. God and Jesus see all of our sin, all of our mistakes, everytime we look back while our hands are upon the plow. Yet despite all of that, God and Jesus still love us unconditionally, without limit, without end.
So yeah, after last night, that plow has been sitting in the field, waiting for me to get out and get back to work.
So part of why this post is coming out so late was due to my lack of self control, and a morning full of us cleaning up the explosion of kids games, glow-in-the-dark bracelet packs, empty juice boxes, and everything else that was left outside as we all crashed for the night. I have written all week about the work that we all need to be rolling up our sleeves to do, and yesterday, I said I would spell that work out clearly for y’all today, so here it is:
- Love God.
- Love People.
That’s the basics, and, of course, there is a lot that goes into those two principles. To love God, you have to love creation. Love this precious world God has gifted us with. Fight for the protection and preservation of the natural world. With that there is endless work that can be done, from simple acts such as picking up the litter on the side of the road, to building a new routine of recycling more, to practicing better energy saving measures, to even simple acts like driving less and walking more. Everyday should be Earth Day as we need to quickly work at reversing the years of destruction we have inflicted on our home.
To love people, well, again, there is endless work available to do. From lifting up the poor, to caring for a lonely widow, Jesus taught us over and over how to demonstrate the love of the Kingdom down here on Earth.
For anyone new to this blog, my mission when creating this website was to give America a Common Sense perspective of reading the entire Holy Bible. I still stress this to everyone, if you have still not read the entire Bible, cover-to-cover, stop what you are doing, put all the distractions aside and READ THE BIBLE. Learn from the original resource material that has inspired, directed, guided, and blessed billions of lives over the last 560+ years (that number was generated from when the Gutenberg Bible was mass-printed). Read the Bible, read for yourself what Jesus instructed us to do. I will not hold you up any longer. You’ve got work to do. Remember, be strong, and do the work. Let’s do this “The Jesus Way”.
Common Sense Reborn 