Sometimes I Get Cranky.

Have you ever been going through rough times and you hear someone complaining about how their dinner at some restaurant wasn't cooked well? Or maybe they are upset because they couldn't get their nails done when they wanted them done. Whatever. Meanwhile, you are hanging onto life by your fingernails; you are in so much mental pain you can't think straight. But you can think straight enough to wonder what the hell they have to complain about. They should try your life out for a few minutes and they would never complain about small things again. (Of course you never share these thoughts with them. No, not nice.)

I sometimes wonder if Jesus felt frustrated like that at his followers.

"For He (Jesus) was teaching His disciples and telling them, "The Son of Man is to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill Him; and when He has been killed, He will rise three days later.  But they did not understand this statement, and they were afraid to ask Him.

They came to Capernaum; and when He was in the house, He began to question them, 'What were you discussing on the way?'

But they kept silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest."

Mark 9:31-34

So, Jesus is telling them once again that soon he would be killed and what do they talk about? Which one would have the best job in the new kingdom. Who was going to sit next to Jesus ruling Israel. That's what they were interested in. I imagine them thinking, "Jesus is always saying strange, incomprehensible things, so just forget what he said and lets discuss something that really matters."

One of my favorite verses in the Bible is when Jesus said, "And Jesus answered and said, 'You unbelieving and perverted generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring him here to Me.' "  Matthew 17:17  If anything shows Jesus' humanity, this is it. It also shows it isn't a sin to get exasperated with people. Jesus was always kind, so I'm sure he said this in a nice way. Maybe.

Well, In the Old Testament, God got good and mad at people too and I don't blame him. Sometimes I say to him, "I must drive you crazy, because I drive my own self crazy."   We are sure fortunate that God is patient. Super patient. I mean just look at the disciples; they were incredibly dumb. I'm glad, because then I don't have to feel so bad about myself. It's like I sometimes think (this is embarrassing), "David committed adultery and then murdered her husband. Well, I've never done anything close to that so I'm golden."  (I know we are saved by grace, but old habits die hard.)

Anyway, I'm with Jesus. Get me outta here. Get me to heaven where I can relax and I don't have to hear about stupid first-world problems.

The Child-Likeness of God.

This is an excerpt from a sermon called, The Child in the Midst, by George MacDonald.

 "And he took a child, and set him in the midst of them: and when he had taken him in his arms, he said unto them, Whosoever shall receive one of such children in my name, receives me; and whosoever shall receive me, receives not me, but him that sent me."——MARK 9: 33-37

Then to receive a child in the name of Jesus is to receive Jesus; to receive Jesus is to receive God; therefore to receive the child is to receive God himself

How terribly, then, have the theologians misrepresented God…Nearly all of them represent him as a great King on a grand throne, thinking how grand he is, and making it the business of his being and the end of his universe to keep up his glory, wielding the bolts of a Jupiter against them that take his name in vain. They would not admit this, but follow out what they say, and it comes much to this. 

Brothers, have you found our king? There he is, kissing little children and saying they are like God. There he is at table with the head of a fisherman lying on his bosom, and somewhat heavy at heart that even he, the beloved disciple, cannot yet understand him well. The simplest peasant who loves his children and his sheep were but a true type of our God beside that monstrosity of a monarch.  

The God who is ever uttering himself in the changeful profusions of nature; who takes millions of years to form a soul that shall understand him and be blessed; who never needs to be, and never is, in haste; who welcomes the simplest thought of truth or beauty as the return for seed he has sown upon the old fallows of eternity, who rejoices in the response of a faltering moment to the age-long cry of his wisdom in the streets; the God of music, of painting, of building, the Lord of Hosts, the God of mountains and oceans; whose laws go forth from one unseen point of wisdom, and thither return without an atom of loss; the God of history working in time unto Christianity; this God is the God of little children, and he alone can be perfectly, abandonedly simple and devoted. 

The deepest, purest love of a woman has its well-spring in him. Our longing desires can no more exhaust the fullness of the treasures of the Godhead, than our imagination can touch their measure. Of him not a thought, not a joy, not a hope of one of his creatures can pass unseen; and while one of them remains unsatisfied, he is not Lord over all.  Therefore, with angels and with archangels, with the spirits of the just made perfect, with the little children of the kingdom, yea, with the Lord himself, and for all them that know him not, we praise and magnify and laud his name in itself, saying Our Father. We do not draw back for that we are unworthy, nor even for that we are hard-hearted and care not for the good. For it is his child-likeness that makes him our God and Father. 

The perfection of his relation to us swallows up all our imperfections, all our defects, all our evils; for our childhood is born of his fatherhood. That man is perfect in faith who can come to God in the utter dearth of his feelings and his desires, without a glow or an aspiration, with the weight of low thoughts, failures, neglects, and wandering forgetfulness, and say to him, "Thou art my refuge, because thou art my home."