Saturday, November 03, 2007

At the right time

I'm staying on the other side of the island this week with a clear view directly facing Molokai. This is a smaller island about 8 miles across a shallow channel. Molokai is perhaps best known for hosting a leper colony.

The timing of when I read scripture seldom seems coincidental. If I think about it I almost don't believe it could be. But the truth is that too often I don't think about it. I havent' for a while.

But today one of the first stories I read was in Luke 5 where a man with leprosy came to Jesus and said, "Lord, if you are willing you can make me clean."

That's seeming less and less coincidental.

What I do love about that story is that Jesus so immediately says, "I am willing" and the man is healed. In fact it's in a section where Jesus is doing amazing works of the power of God with almost no delay. He just brought a boat-sinking catch to self-professed sinful men. After the leper He heals a paralytic in front of Pharisees. It wasn't common for Him to heal in front of that audience. He had no hesitations about eating with tax collectors and sinners before they converted.

It's a stretch of scripture about Jesus expressing the Father's eagerness to get involved. It's a collection of stories of Jesus not waiting until people are ready for Him.

And I have to wonder how our friends on Molokai would feel about this story. If they might be wanting some of that immediacy and wondering where Jesus was around them; wanting some of His disciples to do "greater works than these."

Part of what makes this seem so non-coincidental to me is that yesterday I heard Erwin McMannus tell the story of Moses leaving in a detail I never noticed before. That detail is that one of the miracles that God performed to convince Moses was to stick his hand into his clothing. When Moses did he pulled his hand out to find that it was white with leprosy. This, according to Erwin, revealed physically to Moses, what he already felt inside.

I'm sure there are many reasons for him feeling the way He did. Not least of which, he had tried to defend an Israelite and killed an Egyptian, becoming a murderer and running in exile to the wilderness. Here I think he gave up on any kind of future. And here God met with him a burning bush and all sorts of ways of trying to convince Moses that he had a future liberating Israel.

If anything, this encounter with the God of all his ancestors seems to have made him feel less and less ready for God to work.

But according to God it was time.

In the past I felt God's presence most when I felt like every passage of scripture I read was perfect for the day. It gave me the energy and the interest to get involved with scripture (or more accurately to let it get involved with me). It's been a while since that has happened. I've been trying to get to a point where I'm ready for that, but it's felt pretty far off.

I guess for God it's time.

p.s. the series Erwin McManus is preaching right now is about living and "original life" and what I've heard so far is about the varieties of callings and the varieties of crisis that God wants us to get involved in so that He can show the world He's involved in it through His royal priesthood. I recommend listening to the series podcasts. It's at iTunes and www.mosaic.org.

posted by Scott # 3:10 PM 0 comments