Caution God at Work
Today has been a good day for me. Great weather and some good activity. I had my outpatient therapy session at Northern Colorado Rehab. My therapists there want me to wait for a month for my next appointment to see how my fitness center activity is progressing. One of the issues my physical therapist was covering with me was the nerve regeneration process in my right leg especially. Nerves grow at a rate of 1mm per day. That means if a nerve in my leg needs to completely regenerate if could take over a year for that to take place.
The good news is that I’m not at “ground zero” in the process. The evaluation next month will provide some feedback about the response of nerves helping to build muscles that are now the weakest. My plan is to have at least four days a week of exercise at my fitness center.
After I returned home, I mowed the grass and picked up some leaves. I noticed that my grass is greener now than almost anytime this summer. I have been thankful for the good weather this fall.
BIBLE VERSE FOR TODAY… “Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.” And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked….this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.” John 5:8,16,17
These verses are found in the passage of John’s Gospel related to the healing of the lame man at the Pool of Bethesda. On more than one occasion Jesus healed someone who was lame and instructed them “to take up their bed and walk.” But this one gave the religious leaders an heightened reason for criticism. This was the Sabbath! They believed that anyone from God would certainly view the Sabbath the same way that they did. However, like many politicians today, the Scribes and Pharisee were good at making laws that were good for others to follow but they found a way to exempt themselves from obeying.
On another occasion when Jesus healed a women in the synagogue on the Sabbath, the religious leaders rebuked the woman saying, “come on other days to be healed and not on the Sabbath.” “But the Lord answered him and said, “You hypocrites, does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the stall and lead him away to water him?…” Luke 13:15
Jesus articulated the concept simply as this, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” Mark 2:27 The Sabbath was intended to serve the needs of God’s people. Yet the religious leaders allowed their own laws and their own ideas to get in the way of God’s. As a result the true purpose of God’s laws were distorted by human tradition.
Jesus then “poured salt in the wound” by saying, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.” Yet another time when Jesus made Himself equal to God.
What does this have to do with us today? To begin, what happens when God surprises us? Can God do something that doesn’t fit tightly into my “ideas and traditions?” Are we so comfortable with our spiritual lives that God can’t surprise us? In my life I have seen God use people that I thought He couldn’t use in ways that I didn’t think was possible. Are there areas where we have allowed rules or traditions to blind us to the principle that is at the foundation of that rule or tradition. Are we open to allow the Lord to reveal areas of hypocrisy in our life?
The longer we follow the Lord, the more comfortable we are with “having God figured out” is just the time He may chose to surprise us. Are you ready?