Today's Daily Lesson comes from Mark chapter 10 verses 28 through 31:
28 Peter began to say to him, ‘Look, we have left everything and followed you.’ 29Jesus said, ‘Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news,* 30who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. 31But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.’
I heard something very funny the other day at church.
Two families have been friends for over sixty years. They raised their children together at Broadway. The two families are so close that the father in one once introduced the grown daughter in the other his "faux daughter". "Does that make you a 'faux pa'?" she wittily asked.
There are lots of faux family members to be discovered in a church community. For so many who have not had good relationships with their biological families family can be hard. But others become surrogates in special ways. Some lose family members over religion or politics or completely different values. It is very painful. But new relationships are also found in the community of the congregation.
So what Jesus said is trues. "No one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age."
The losses can be heavy and grievous. But the gains can also be beautiful and life-giving, and the faux families very, very true.
Ryon Price is Senior Pasto of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas.
No comments:
Post a Comment