Daily Devotions

Peter began to say to him, ‘Look, we have left everything and followed you.’ Jesus said, ‘Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.’  Mark 10:28-31

What has the Christian faith cost you?

Seriously.

This isn’t a question about earning your way into heaven based on an installment plan of saintly behavior or earthly suffering or even serving consecutive terms on a church council.  It is a simple question.

What has the Christian faith cost you?

This past Saturday we had a funeral at our church of a woman for whom the Christian faith was more than a factoid of her ethnic identity, more than the legacy of her family tradition.  The 92 years of her life were grounded in the church of her childhood, the church in which she raised her children and lived her adult life, and the church where she spent her last years. The church, her faith, wasn’t a place she visited occasionally when she felt like it, it was the heart of her identity that she carried into every facet of her life.

And she would have been the first to tell me that last paragraph was hyperbole.

As I spoke at her funeral, I talked a bit about watching her slowly walk into church on Sunday mornings with her walker.  About noticing how her daughter had gone out of her way to bring her to God’s house, to the table where she found meaning, purpose, and hope.  The last meaningful words I heard her say were the Lord’s Prayer as we had communion together, with her children, in the last bed that would hold her before she entered eternal rest.

I’m still carrying her into this week for she continues to remind me that following Jesus is the only journey worth walking.

Yes Peter, you did leave everything to follow Jesus.  Good for you.  Do you have any idea (of course you don’t, you couldn’t, you were too caught up in the daily grind of life just like we are), how millions of us would give everything, anything, to have just one day of your life?  Just one day to see our Lord in the flesh.  To hear his voice.  To watch him touch lives.  To speak to him and hear him respond.  Peter, we would give everything for that and you got him for three years!

So yes Peter, you made tremendous sacrifices and you would continue to make them until the very end.  As have millions of saints down through the years.  People investing their lives, their time, their money, their passion, their commitment, their compassion, to love their Lord by living God’s will to the best of their ability.

And now the baton has been passed to us.  Now we, who stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us, are the ones gifted with the calling to be Christ in the lives of our family, our friends, our neighbors, our community.

This is too much to do alone so we band together in communities of faith.  We do our part so the party can continue.

What has the Christian faith cost you?

Let us pray:  Dear Jesus, you know us, everything about us.  You know what we grasp too tightly, you know what we fritter away, you know our hearts.  Renew our desire to follow you more closely, to serve more willingly, to give more freely.  Encourage us, as we face life today, with a gentle reminder that it is all worth it.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

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