Daily Lesson for February 5, 2018

Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Hebrews chapter 13 verses 10 through 14:

10We have an altar from which those who officiate in the tent have no right to eat. 11For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp.12Therefore Jesus also suffered outside the city gate in order to sanctify the people by his own blood.13Let us then go to him outside the camp and bear the abuse he endured. 14For here we have no lasting city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.

In the last year of his life, even as the Civil Rights movement had made some progress on the racial front, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. understood that there would never be true equality in America lest there be a movement which went beyond the initial aim of desegregation and began to address some of the economic inequities in our country. To criticism that Dr. King and other blacks would not be satisfied, Dr. King answered by saying he shared with the prophets of many centuries a “holy dissatisfaction” with the status quo.

To be a Christian is to live with a kind of perpetual but also holy dissatisfaction.  We just cannot be satisfied with the way things are, because we know things could always be better. We cannot be assuaged with “progress” because our standard is perfection. “Be ye perfect, as our Father in heaven is perfect,” Jesus said. So we are always striving to make that “more perfect Union” our Founding Fathers spoke of.

Today’s Lesson says, “For here we have no lasting city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.” Yes, we are always looking for this city. We are always working towards us. And no, we can never be satisfied until we attain it. For when you have phrases like “liberty and justice for all” and “All men are created equal” as cornerstones then anything less will never satisfy. We’re looking for the city that is to come; and we won’t stop looking until we find it. 

There is an old saying, “One who is content in his little village is parochial, while one who is content amidst the whole world is a cosmopolitan.  But one who is content nowhere is a saint. 

Here’s to those who just cannot be content with the way things are. Here’s to the holy dissatisfied.  For they’re the ones with the vision to see what things need to be changed and the gall to change them.