About
I didn't know they were going up the mountain for a party.
Or religious experience. Whatever. The point is, Jesus left us, took his three favorites, and we had to contend with the rabble.
Excuse me, the people. I've got to quit calling them the rabble. But they really do get on my nerves when they keep asking for stuff. For things. For Jesus to do things for them.
Okay, so honestly, am I upset that they ask for that...or am I upset about what happened that day?
Jesus took Peter, James and John up the mountain, and from what I heard later, he sort of got all glowing and stuff. Lit up. Peter claimed it was a glimpse of the glory of God shining through Jesus, unfiltered. I thought no one could look on God and live. So maybe it was filtered a little bit.
Anyway, the rest of us were down at the foot of the mountain, waiting. Actually, I felt more like a bouncer, holding back the crowds, letting Jesus have some alone time. He had given us instructions to make sure that no one followed them up the mountain. So even though we weren't invited, we had to do crowd control.
Have you ever been in a crowd that wants to get into a concert or an event and the time for the doors to open has passed? And the doors are still shut? That's sort of the way this group was. They wanted to see Jesus, they wanted to see him now, and they were getting impatient. I told one of them, "What do you want me to do? I don't know when he's coming back down any more than you do!" That's when the father pushed his way to the front of the crowd.
"Please!" he screamed. "Please, you've got to help my son! He has a demon, and it's trying to kill him." Almost on cue, the demon threw the boy to the ground and he thrashed around. The father tried to hold his son. "Sometimes," he told me, "the demon throws him into the fire or tries to hurt him in other ways." Then, he looked right into my eyes. "Please help him."
Is there anything a father wouldn't do to help his son? And so I gathered the disciples together, and we decided that we'd seen Jesus cast out demons many times. Surely we could do it. Together, we remembered the words Jesus said and the ways he touched people, and then we went to the father. "We'll do it," I said confidently. I've never seen such gratitude in another person's eyes as I saw in that father that day.
That gratitude quickly turned to contempt as our confidence showed itself as incompetence. We said the same words Jesus said, we touched the boy the same way Jesus would have, and yet every time we tried to command the demon to come out, it instead threw the boy into a fit again. We tried—how many times? Seemed like a hundred or more—and every time we failed.
Just about the time I was ready to give up, Jesus and the three came down the mountain. Word got through the crowd pretty quickly that Jesus was coming, and the father, with one glare back at me, grabbed his son and both of them fell down at Jesus' feet. "Master," the father said, "I asked your disciples to heal my son, and they couldn't. Could you? Will you? Please?"
Jesus looked over at us. Never in my life have I wanted to hide more than I wanted to at that moment. But I just stood there, mouth hanging stupidly open. I didn't know what to say. Jesus did, though. "How long shall I put up with this generation?" he asked. And then he healed the boy. Just that quickly.
I couldn't help but wonder what I had missed, so I asked Jesus one day about it. A day quite a while after that day. What was I doing wrong? Was there a secret motion, or a magic set of words? "Did you ever think," Jesus said to me, "that it wasn't about you healing him, but me?" But, I said, you were up the mountain. "That's not what I said," Jesus replied. "Did you ever think it wasn't about you? When you let yourself think you could do the healing, you couldn't. Because this whole thing isn't about you."
Hmmm....not.....about......me?
Or religious experience. Whatever. The point is, Jesus left us, took his three favorites, and we had to contend with the rabble.
Excuse me, the people. I've got to quit calling them the rabble. But they really do get on my nerves when they keep asking for stuff. For things. For Jesus to do things for them.
Okay, so honestly, am I upset that they ask for that...or am I upset about what happened that day?
Jesus took Peter, James and John up the mountain, and from what I heard later, he sort of got all glowing and stuff. Lit up. Peter claimed it was a glimpse of the glory of God shining through Jesus, unfiltered. I thought no one could look on God and live. So maybe it was filtered a little bit.
Anyway, the rest of us were down at the foot of the mountain, waiting. Actually, I felt more like a bouncer, holding back the crowds, letting Jesus have some alone time. He had given us instructions to make sure that no one followed them up the mountain. So even though we weren't invited, we had to do crowd control.
Have you ever been in a crowd that wants to get into a concert or an event and the time for the doors to open has passed? And the doors are still shut? That's sort of the way this group was. They wanted to see Jesus, they wanted to see him now, and they were getting impatient. I told one of them, "What do you want me to do? I don't know when he's coming back down any more than you do!" That's when the father pushed his way to the front of the crowd.
"Please!" he screamed. "Please, you've got to help my son! He has a demon, and it's trying to kill him." Almost on cue, the demon threw the boy to the ground and he thrashed around. The father tried to hold his son. "Sometimes," he told me, "the demon throws him into the fire or tries to hurt him in other ways." Then, he looked right into my eyes. "Please help him."
Is there anything a father wouldn't do to help his son? And so I gathered the disciples together, and we decided that we'd seen Jesus cast out demons many times. Surely we could do it. Together, we remembered the words Jesus said and the ways he touched people, and then we went to the father. "We'll do it," I said confidently. I've never seen such gratitude in another person's eyes as I saw in that father that day.
That gratitude quickly turned to contempt as our confidence showed itself as incompetence. We said the same words Jesus said, we touched the boy the same way Jesus would have, and yet every time we tried to command the demon to come out, it instead threw the boy into a fit again. We tried—how many times? Seemed like a hundred or more—and every time we failed.
Just about the time I was ready to give up, Jesus and the three came down the mountain. Word got through the crowd pretty quickly that Jesus was coming, and the father, with one glare back at me, grabbed his son and both of them fell down at Jesus' feet. "Master," the father said, "I asked your disciples to heal my son, and they couldn't. Could you? Will you? Please?"
Jesus looked over at us. Never in my life have I wanted to hide more than I wanted to at that moment. But I just stood there, mouth hanging stupidly open. I didn't know what to say. Jesus did, though. "How long shall I put up with this generation?" he asked. And then he healed the boy. Just that quickly.
I couldn't help but wonder what I had missed, so I asked Jesus one day about it. A day quite a while after that day. What was I doing wrong? Was there a secret motion, or a magic set of words? "Did you ever think," Jesus said to me, "that it wasn't about you healing him, but me?" But, I said, you were up the mountain. "That's not what I said," Jesus replied. "Did you ever think it wasn't about you? When you let yourself think you could do the healing, you couldn't. Because this whole thing isn't about you."
Hmmm....not.....about......me?
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