Daily Post for July 1, 2014

Today's Daily Lesson is from Matthew chapter 21 verses 31b and 32:

31b Jesus said to them, “Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you. 32 For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him. And even when you saw it, you did not afterward change your minds . . ."

On Sunday I had the honor of being asked to present a friend his five year sobriety chip.  Five years ago my friend may well have been the drunkest drunk in America - or at least he was working on it. He was what the AA book calls a "real alcoholic".

In presenting with his chip, I spoke about my appreciation for AA's way making people small enough to enter through the kingdom door.  I talked about how Jesus said a lot of religious people stand outside the door, keeping others from entering in and themselves end up getting locked out. They get locked out because they think they and everyone else has to rise up to some entry bar, when in fact the threshold is much lower.

After I presented my friend his chip, he can up and spoke and talked about how he got sober.  He said, "I went to the best residential treatment center in the country".  You might have thought he meant somewhere where the rich and famous go.  But then he went on, "I went to Managed Care - a rehab place for poor folks where I had to scrub the commodes and a glass of Kool-aid was considered a perk.

"And," he said, "that was exactly what I needed.  It was what I needed because it humbled me.  And I needed to be humbled."

Scrubbing the toilets saved my friend.  It saved him because it bowed him - both physically and spiritually.   And in bending over, cleaning his and others' human excrement, he found the threshold.

God's bar is actually lower than ours.  It's so low that even tax collectors, and prostitutes, and real alcoholics can get in.  They can get in because the bar is actually a bar to go under rather than over.  

And that means only those willing to bend over and be humbled will find the way.