Finding God's Grace

Jim:

1 Samuel 28:3-20
Saul’s experience with the medium of Endor sounds like a scene out of a Shakespeare play. God’s rejection of Saul is now complete and according to a later editor, it is because of Saul’s failure to destroy the Amalekites as God had ordered. David will now become the king of Israel and Saul and his sons will fall to the Philistines. Personally I don’t put a lot of stock in the details of this story, the medium’s ability to contact Samuel, for example. It is enough to know that Saul now recognizes the situation, understands what is going on and why, and that it is too late to do anything about it. How that realization came to Saul is not as important as the fact that it did.

Acts 15:1-11
Here verse 11 says, “we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they (the Gentiles) will.” This is a nice, compact statement on the nature of salvation which, according to the writer of Acts (by way of Paul speaking) comes from the grace of God in Jesus Christ no matter who we happen to be. This is also the beginning of the transformation of Christianity from a Jewish sect to a religion in its own right.

Mark 5:1-20
Verse 11 really jumped out at me today. “Then they (the Gerasenes) began to beg Jesus to leave their neighborhood.” Wow! Can you imagine inviting Jesus to leave? Now, in their defense, the Gerasenes were frightened by the things that Jesus had done, and he did help to destroy 2,000 swine. But still, can you imagine having Jesus in your very midst and sending him away? Actually, I suspect that we invite Jesus to leave our neighborhoods far more often than we realize. It happens every time we resist the work of the Holy Spirit because we don’t understand it or like where it is taking us. It happens every time we try to compartmentalize our lives, with work and family and politics on one side and religion on the other (as if God were not a vital part of it all). It happens when we turn our backs on those in need and when we refuse to be reconciled with others and when we fail to live generous, caring lives. These are all times when we essentially beg Jesus to leave our neighborhood. Just imagine what would happen if we lived our lives as those who invite Jesus into our neighborhoods and into our lives on a daily basis?