The
song bespeaks of the devotion that one has to the loves of their life.
When they are doing their normal things of life, they wish to be doing
them with the folks about which they feel the strongest. They in fact, are willing to do almost anything, "just to be the man who walked a
thousand miles to fall down at your door". The Notes hopes you have
folks around you that are willing to do that for you. But let's put the
proverbial walking shoe on the other foot.
What
are you willing to do for those with which you have the strongest
relationships? What are you willing to do for those with which you have
an "ok" relationship? How about those with which you have a casual
relationship or no relationship at all?
Perhaps
this is a familiar story to you. Maybe it is the first time you have
read it. One point of context you must remember while reading it is
that Hebrew folks and Samaritan folks really didn't like each other that
much. With that in my mind, please reread this parable.
Jesus
used stories such as this all throughout His ministry. He took
commonplace occurrences, added a touch of the believably extraordinary,
and was very direct in His approach to calling into account the pride
and prejudice of those who attempted to trap Him.
The
lesson that Jesus has for His followers today is one of exceeding
expectations. This is something that may be difficult to wrap our heads
around. For context, let's go to the Sermon on the Mount.
Here
Jesus speaks about ALL of the relationships we could potentially have.
He instructs us to go further than we are commanded to with our enemies
and love everyone. As a follower of Jesus, what expectations are on
us? Do we meet those expectations or are our relationships sketchy due
to the perception of expectations unmet?
From
the above blog, you can see that the marriage relationship takes much
work and communication to ensure that expectations are perceptually and
actually met. This attitude really must extend to each relationship we
may have.
In
view of Jesus, example, Christ followers should not only be
perceived/actually meeting expectations, but we should do more than is
expected. When he had a potluck, not only did 5000 (in one instance)
folks get fed, but there were enough leftovers, to feed many more. As a
challenge, read the Gospels (Matthew HCSB/The Message parallel, Mark HCSB/The Message parallel, Luke HCSB/The Message parallel, John HCSB/The Message parallel) with the idea of looking for how in many if not all of Jesus relationships, He exceeded the expectations.
We
live in a world where many try to be good folks. They attempt to be
nice to others and indeed, look out for their fellow man. Some of these
folks are followers of Jesus, some, well not so much. How would the
world be transformed if Christ followers adopted the mentality of
exceeding the expectations of everyone around them? And then when asked
"why are you going the extra mile for me?" Our reply could be that we
follow someone who walked more than 500 miles to make sure we could have
a relationship with Him forever...He walked the streets of Jerusalem
carrying a cross, and then was crucified and died. He then, in the
biggest way ever known to mankind, exceeded everyone's expectations by
being brought back to life by God the Father on a day that we celebrate
very soon. That is why we do what we do...IF we do what we do..."I
would walk 500 miles and I would walk 500 more..."
'Til Tuesday
Serving HIM by serving you,
Randy
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