Grace in a Desolate Place (November 11. 2007)
David_M9 November 11, 2007
Ken Shigematsu
Title: Grace in a Desolate Place
Text: 2 Samuel 9
Big Idea: When we have a life-giving relationship with God, we will love, as God loves.
When I was in New England last month, one night I had dinner with a man named Chuck, a Christian business leader. He’s associated with an Ivy League university. One of the things that Chuck has done for the Ukraine in their post-communist years is to mobilize professors of business from North America to teach (on volunteer basis) business and entrepreneurship courses there. Chuck says that in his years recruiting professors he’s found that it’s easier to get Christian professors of business to teach in the Ukraine for free than to recruit business professor with no faith commitment. Chuck says Christian professors generally speaking welcome the opportunity to teach for free in a developing place like the Ukraine seeing it as a kind of “mission/service opportunity” even though they’re teaching business at a public university not Christianity.
Roy Hattersley, a columnist for the UK Guardian and former Deputy Leader for the British Labor Party, and an outspoken atheist, was on site as a journalist after the Hurricane Katrina. He came to the conclusion after watching the Salvation Army lead several other faith-based organizations in the relief effort after Hurricane Katrina, Christians "are the people most likely to take the risks and make the sacrifices involved in helping others." He also noted as an atheist himself the conspicuous absence of representatives from atheists' associations in the relief effort.
One of the advantages of being truly connected to Jesus Christ has—is we are directly connected to the greatest reservoir of love in the universe—the love of God and as result you will have more capacity, than we would otherwise, to love.
The primary sign according to the Scriptures that a person is connected to God is not the capacity to do supernatural miracles, heal people, or the courage to take a bullet for God as martyr for Christ, but the greatest sign that we are really connected to God is our capacity to love.
Jesus said by this all people will know you are my followers: love one another.
David, in the Scriptures, is known as a man with the hand of God upon him. He is famous for his dramatic victory in battle against Goliath. He is also well-known as being a great warrior-poet of Israel. But perhaps, more than any other incident in David’s life, his encounter with a man named Mephibosheth is proof-positive that God’s hand was upon David. How so?
Let me set up the context.
For many years, David has been running as a fugitive, fleeing for his life from King Saul, who is trying to kill him. One day King Saul dies in battle, while fighting against Israel’s arch enemy, the Philistines and David is anointed king… first over the southern sate Judah at age 30, and then over all of Israel at age 37.
In the ancient world, when a person was made king, it was the customary and strategically savvy for the king to kill off any member of a previous dynasty’s family because that person might make a claim for the throne. If you were a descendant of a previous king, you were instantly a target—you were either a dead man walking or like Osama Ben Laden you went into hiding.
When David becomes king, one of the first things he does is to locate surviving members of King Saul’s household. Why? To kill them off?
Let’s see… if you have your Bibles please turn to 2 Samuel 9
1 David asked, "Is there anyone still left of the house of Saul to whom I can show kindness for Jonathan's sake?"
2 Now there was a servant of Saul's household named Ziba. They summoned him to appear before David, and the king said to him, "Are you Ziba?" "At your service," he replied.
3 The king asked, "Is there no one still left of the house of Saul to whom I can show God's kindness?" Ziba answered the king, "There is still a son of Jonathan; he is lame in both feet."
Why does David want to show kindness to Saul’s family instead of kill them off? David was best friends with King Saul’s son Jonathan. Jonathan intuited that God was with David in a special way and that David rather than he was God’s sovereign choice as the next King of Israel. Jonathan was not jealous or threatened by this. In fact, he loved David and entered into a covenant friendship with David. Jonathan as part of his covenant friendship asks David to never stop being kind to his family, even when the Lord cuts off every one of David’s enemies from the face of the earth. Years later, David, as king, remembers the promise he made to Jonathan and asked: Is there anyone in Saul’s household that I can show kindness to for Jonathan’s sake?
Ziba a servant in Saul’s household answered the King David, "There is still a son of Jonathan; he is lame in both feet."
Radio Pastor Chuck Swindoll says: If you read between the lines, you sense Ziba counseling David to think twice before he does anything for Mephibosheth. Mephibosheth had not been able to walk from the time he was 5 years old. When Mephibosheth was 5 years old, news came to Saul’s palace that King Saul and his son Jonathan had just been killed by the Philistines on Mount Gilboa in the Battle of Jezreel. Panic struck. The Philistines were ruthless. With Saul and his son dead, the royal household and everyone in it was slated for destruction. There would be no mercy to anyone connected to the names of Saul and Jonathan. To make matters worse, David’s band of soldiers was at large and without Saul, whom David honoured as God’s king, and without Jonathan, his covenant friend--there was nothing preventing David from coming in and cleaning house, and killing anyone left behind in the old regime.
Not knowing what to expect, all the servants in the palace ran for their lives. Five-year-old Mephibosheth’s nurse grabbed him on the run and then tripped and fell. Both of the boy’s ankles were broken (2 Samuel 4:4). He was carried with a group of escaping servants east across the Jordan Valley to safety, but Mephibosheth was never again able to walk.
Mephishosheth was the only living heir of the once great household of Saul, but no one knew it, because his life would have been in danger if that information were revealed. He grew up with his royal identity suppressed, with all the privileges of royalty denied to him.
In 2 Samuel 9: 4
4 "Where is he?" the king asked. Ziba answered, "He is at the house of Makir son of Ammiel in Lo Debar."
The word “Lo” in Hebrew means “no”; the word “Debar” means “pasture.” Mephibosheth was living in the land of no pasture…he was in some desert… in some desolate, barren place. Mephibosheth was likely hiding for his life, afraid that the new king would kill him. Mephibosheth’s name means “seething dishonor.” Not only had Mephibosheth been crippled physically, but as his family lost power he had also been crippled emotionally. In fact, when he sees David, he cannot even look him in the eye and calls himself “a dead dog.” (In this Hebrew culture, “dog” was not considered a term of endearment, but used in reference to a human being would have been considered a terrible insult.)
When David called for Mephibosheth, terror struck him. Mephibosheth would have known that David as the new king would be searching out the land top to bottom for any signs of Saul’s descendants. Like a skydiver whose parachute does not open, Mephibosheth was saying: It’s over, adios, sayonara, good-bye.
In vs. 6
6 When Mephibosheth son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, came to David, he bowed down to pay him honor. David said, "Mephibosheth!" "At your service," he replied.
7 "Don't be afraid," David said to him, "for I will surely show you kindness for the sake of your father Jonathan. I will restore to you all the land that belonged to your grandfather Saul, and you will always eat at my table."
8 Mephibosheth bowed down and said, "What is your servant, that you should notice a dead dog like me?"
Mephibosheth would never have imagined in his wildest dreams that he was being invited by David to be loved. WhenDavid says: You will always eat at my table, in the culture this would have indicated that David was inviting Mephibosheth to be a friend, in fact more than a friend—a family member.
Chuck Swindoll says: Imagine Mephibosheth, coming into the dinner with bright and witty Joab, talented, stunningly-handsome Absalom, his beautiful sister Tamar with her movie star good looks, and then here comes Mephibosheth clump, clump, clump.
In vs. 1 and 3 David asks is there anyone in Saul’s household to whom I can show God’s kindness?
The Hebrew word that David uses here to describe God’s kindness the word “hesed.” The word Hesed is used three times in vss. 1, 3, 7.
Eugene Peterson et al have out that the Hebrew word “chesed,” narrowly described as “love,” is a large word. No single word in our language is adequate to translate it, so we revert to the use of adjectives to bring out the distinctive quality and broad reach of this love: steadfast love, loyal love, covenant love. What we’re after is an understanding that retains the affection and desire and intimacy that commonly go with love, as we sometimes experience it as parents and children, “lovers” and friends, but now amalgamated with the stability, dependability, unswerving commitment and steady reliability that we so commonly find wanting in ourselves and others.
“Chesed” is often used in the biblical revelation to designate God’s love. But, we, as humans, who have been created in the image of God, are also capable of loving this way, even though we never seem to get very good at it. “Chesed” is love without regard to shifting circumstances, hormones, emotional states, and personal convenience. This is the kind of love with which ‘God so loved the world….’
David asks, in vss 1 and 3 "Is there anyone still left of the house of Saul to whom I can show kindness (hesed) for Jonathan's sake?"
In. Vs. 7
David says, "Don't be afraid," David said to him, "for I will surely show you kindness (hesed) for the sake of your father Jonathan…
And when we are connected to the living God, the God of hesed love… God’s loyal and constant love… we are able to love like God… because his love flows through us…
Just over a year ago, as we know, a troubled milkman named Charles Roberts barricaded himself inside the West Nickel Mine Amish School. He murders five young girls and wounds six others. Roberts committed suicide when police arrived on the scene. It is a dark day for the Amish community of West Nickel Mines, but it is also a dark day for Marie Roberts—the wife of the gunman—and her two young children.
But on the following Saturday, Marie experienced something truly countercultural while attending her husband's funeral. That day, she and her children watched as Amish families—about half of the 75 mourners present—came and stood alongside them in the midst of their own blinding grief. Despite the crime the man had perpetrated, the Amish came to mourn Charles Carl Roberts—a husband and daddy.
Why because that Amish community were connected to Hesed love of God… so they can love like God loves. Like David they can love the family of the man who tried to destroy them because God’s hesed loves inside them.
Not all acts of God’s hesed love are so dramatic.
Steve a manager at a large software company in the Pacific Northwest resolved to visit each of his employees, all six of whom he had not seen face to face in over six months even though they worked in the same building and on the same floor. Steve wanted to tell each of them how much he appreciated them, and name one thing they did especially well.
After the visit from Steve, one of his software engineers, Lenny, presented him with an Xbox gaming console. Steve was taken aback, as he knew Lenny had taken pay cuts over the last year. But he was more surprised to learn that the money had come from the sale of a nine-millimeter pistol—a pistol Lenny had bought months earlier with the intention of killing himself. Lenny told him of his mother's death the previous year, and of his ensuing loneliness and depression:
I started a routine every night after work: eating a bowl of Ramen, listening to Nirvana, and getting the gun out. It took almost a month to get the courage to put the bullets in the gun. It took another couple of months to get used to the feeling of the barrel of the gun on the top of my teeth. For the last few weeks, I was putting ever so slight pressure on the trigger, and I was getting so close, Steve—so close.
Last week, you freaked me out. You came into my cubicle, put your arm around me, and told me you appreciated me because I turn in all my projects early, and that helps you sleep at night. You also said that I have a great sense of humor over e-mail and that you are glad I came into your life.
That night I went home, ate Ramen, and listened to Nirvana—and when I got the gun out, it scared me silly for the first time. All I could think about was what you said—that you were glad I came into your life.
The next day I went back to the pawnshop and sold the gun. I remembered that you had said you wanted the Xbox more than anything, but with a new baby at home could not afford it. So, for my life, you get this game. Thanks, boss.
When we are connected to God’s hesed love we will learn to love as God loves… it may not be super dramatic, it may be small and simple… a word of encouragement, listening to someone, taking a meal to someone…
If you are connected to God you can love you have greater capacity to love because God’s Hesed is in. Hesed is in you to give…
If you don’t feel an overwhelming flood of God’s love flowing through you… I want close with two points of application: start small acts of love… thank people, when you’re raking your leaves—perhaps, rack some of your neighbors, take someone to coffee who’s going through a hard time…
Habits strengthen our neural network. Hebbian theory describes how “brains cells that fire together, wire together.” If you do something enough, it will strengthen the neural networks, so you have greater capacity… If you keep hitting a tennis ball, as your neural networks are strengthened…you’ll greater a capacity to hit the ball… Jesus says you must forgive seventy times seven, signifying our call for complete forgiveness, and in the opinion of some Biblical scholars calling us to “sow and reap” the habit of forgiveness to strengthen our forgiveness neuron…
Keep hitting tennis of love and by sowing in this way… you’ll be strengthening your God given capacity to love…
2nd recall often what Christ has done for you:
Today is Remembrance Day. In the movie, Saving Private Ryan, in one of the opening scenes an elderly veteran and his family are visiting a memorial cemetery in France, an immaculate green rows of white crosses. The veteran stops, falls to his knees, and weeps. He remembers how soldiers laid down their lives on the mission to find and rescue him…
Ryan is looking at the cross with Captain John Miller’s name on, the captain who lead the rescue mission for Ryan who died in the process. His family comes to comfort him, he weeps, and he turns to his wife and he turns to his family, and he says: Tell me that I have had a good life. Tell me that I am a good man. He wants to know that he was worth the loss of the others who died for him. He wants his life to be lived out of gratitude for the sacrifice that others made in order for him to live.
And when we live our lives recognizing that Jesus Christ has sacrificed his life for us; when we had nothing to offer him, when were his enemies so that we could live; when we realize that Christ lives inside us, we can become people like David show God’s hesed to the Mephibosheths in our lives… like David we God’s grace even in a desolate place…
Pray…
A person we need to love?
Ask filled with the love of God.
(The sermon can be heard on line at: www.tenth.ca/audio)
Ken Shigematsu
Title: Grace in a Desolate Place
Text: 2 Samuel 9
Big Idea: When we have a life-giving relationship with God, we will love, as God loves.
When I was in New England last month, one night I had dinner with a man named Chuck, a Christian business leader. He’s associated with an Ivy League university. One of the things that Chuck has done for the Ukraine in their post-communist years is to mobilize professors of business from North America to teach (on volunteer basis) business and entrepreneurship courses there. Chuck says that in his years recruiting professors he’s found that it’s easier to get Christian professors of business to teach in the Ukraine for free than to recruit business professor with no faith commitment. Chuck says Christian professors generally speaking welcome the opportunity to teach for free in a developing place like the Ukraine seeing it as a kind of “mission/service opportunity” even though they’re teaching business at a public university not Christianity.
Roy Hattersley, a columnist for the UK Guardian and former Deputy Leader for the British Labor Party, and an outspoken atheist, was on site as a journalist after the Hurricane Katrina. He came to the conclusion after watching the Salvation Army lead several other faith-based organizations in the relief effort after Hurricane Katrina, Christians "are the people most likely to take the risks and make the sacrifices involved in helping others." He also noted as an atheist himself the conspicuous absence of representatives from atheists' associations in the relief effort.
One of the advantages of being truly connected to Jesus Christ has—is we are directly connected to the greatest reservoir of love in the universe—the love of God and as result you will have more capacity, than we would otherwise, to love.
The primary sign according to the Scriptures that a person is connected to God is not the capacity to do supernatural miracles, heal people, or the courage to take a bullet for God as martyr for Christ, but the greatest sign that we are really connected to God is our capacity to love.
Jesus said by this all people will know you are my followers: love one another.
David, in the Scriptures, is known as a man with the hand of God upon him. He is famous for his dramatic victory in battle against Goliath. He is also well-known as being a great warrior-poet of Israel. But perhaps, more than any other incident in David’s life, his encounter with a man named Mephibosheth is proof-positive that God’s hand was upon David. How so?
Let me set up the context.
For many years, David has been running as a fugitive, fleeing for his life from King Saul, who is trying to kill him. One day King Saul dies in battle, while fighting against Israel’s arch enemy, the Philistines and David is anointed king… first over the southern sate Judah at age 30, and then over all of Israel at age 37.
In the ancient world, when a person was made king, it was the customary and strategically savvy for the king to kill off any member of a previous dynasty’s family because that person might make a claim for the throne. If you were a descendant of a previous king, you were instantly a target—you were either a dead man walking or like Osama Ben Laden you went into hiding.
When David becomes king, one of the first things he does is to locate surviving members of King Saul’s household. Why? To kill them off?
Let’s see… if you have your Bibles please turn to 2 Samuel 9
1 David asked, "Is there anyone still left of the house of Saul to whom I can show kindness for Jonathan's sake?"
2 Now there was a servant of Saul's household named Ziba. They summoned him to appear before David, and the king said to him, "Are you Ziba?" "At your service," he replied.
3 The king asked, "Is there no one still left of the house of Saul to whom I can show God's kindness?" Ziba answered the king, "There is still a son of Jonathan; he is lame in both feet."
Why does David want to show kindness to Saul’s family instead of kill them off? David was best friends with King Saul’s son Jonathan. Jonathan intuited that God was with David in a special way and that David rather than he was God’s sovereign choice as the next King of Israel. Jonathan was not jealous or threatened by this. In fact, he loved David and entered into a covenant friendship with David. Jonathan as part of his covenant friendship asks David to never stop being kind to his family, even when the Lord cuts off every one of David’s enemies from the face of the earth. Years later, David, as king, remembers the promise he made to Jonathan and asked: Is there anyone in Saul’s household that I can show kindness to for Jonathan’s sake?
Ziba a servant in Saul’s household answered the King David, "There is still a son of Jonathan; he is lame in both feet."
Radio Pastor Chuck Swindoll says: If you read between the lines, you sense Ziba counseling David to think twice before he does anything for Mephibosheth. Mephibosheth had not been able to walk from the time he was 5 years old. When Mephibosheth was 5 years old, news came to Saul’s palace that King Saul and his son Jonathan had just been killed by the Philistines on Mount Gilboa in the Battle of Jezreel. Panic struck. The Philistines were ruthless. With Saul and his son dead, the royal household and everyone in it was slated for destruction. There would be no mercy to anyone connected to the names of Saul and Jonathan. To make matters worse, David’s band of soldiers was at large and without Saul, whom David honoured as God’s king, and without Jonathan, his covenant friend--there was nothing preventing David from coming in and cleaning house, and killing anyone left behind in the old regime.
Not knowing what to expect, all the servants in the palace ran for their lives. Five-year-old Mephibosheth’s nurse grabbed him on the run and then tripped and fell. Both of the boy’s ankles were broken (2 Samuel 4:4). He was carried with a group of escaping servants east across the Jordan Valley to safety, but Mephibosheth was never again able to walk.
Mephishosheth was the only living heir of the once great household of Saul, but no one knew it, because his life would have been in danger if that information were revealed. He grew up with his royal identity suppressed, with all the privileges of royalty denied to him.
In 2 Samuel 9: 4
4 "Where is he?" the king asked. Ziba answered, "He is at the house of Makir son of Ammiel in Lo Debar."
The word “Lo” in Hebrew means “no”; the word “Debar” means “pasture.” Mephibosheth was living in the land of no pasture…he was in some desert… in some desolate, barren place. Mephibosheth was likely hiding for his life, afraid that the new king would kill him. Mephibosheth’s name means “seething dishonor.” Not only had Mephibosheth been crippled physically, but as his family lost power he had also been crippled emotionally. In fact, when he sees David, he cannot even look him in the eye and calls himself “a dead dog.” (In this Hebrew culture, “dog” was not considered a term of endearment, but used in reference to a human being would have been considered a terrible insult.)
When David called for Mephibosheth, terror struck him. Mephibosheth would have known that David as the new king would be searching out the land top to bottom for any signs of Saul’s descendants. Like a skydiver whose parachute does not open, Mephibosheth was saying: It’s over, adios, sayonara, good-bye.
In vs. 6
6 When Mephibosheth son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, came to David, he bowed down to pay him honor. David said, "Mephibosheth!" "At your service," he replied.
7 "Don't be afraid," David said to him, "for I will surely show you kindness for the sake of your father Jonathan. I will restore to you all the land that belonged to your grandfather Saul, and you will always eat at my table."
8 Mephibosheth bowed down and said, "What is your servant, that you should notice a dead dog like me?"
Mephibosheth would never have imagined in his wildest dreams that he was being invited by David to be loved. WhenDavid says: You will always eat at my table, in the culture this would have indicated that David was inviting Mephibosheth to be a friend, in fact more than a friend—a family member.
Chuck Swindoll says: Imagine Mephibosheth, coming into the dinner with bright and witty Joab, talented, stunningly-handsome Absalom, his beautiful sister Tamar with her movie star good looks, and then here comes Mephibosheth clump, clump, clump.
In vs. 1 and 3 David asks is there anyone in Saul’s household to whom I can show God’s kindness?
The Hebrew word that David uses here to describe God’s kindness the word “hesed.” The word Hesed is used three times in vss. 1, 3, 7.
Eugene Peterson et al have out that the Hebrew word “chesed,” narrowly described as “love,” is a large word. No single word in our language is adequate to translate it, so we revert to the use of adjectives to bring out the distinctive quality and broad reach of this love: steadfast love, loyal love, covenant love. What we’re after is an understanding that retains the affection and desire and intimacy that commonly go with love, as we sometimes experience it as parents and children, “lovers” and friends, but now amalgamated with the stability, dependability, unswerving commitment and steady reliability that we so commonly find wanting in ourselves and others.
“Chesed” is often used in the biblical revelation to designate God’s love. But, we, as humans, who have been created in the image of God, are also capable of loving this way, even though we never seem to get very good at it. “Chesed” is love without regard to shifting circumstances, hormones, emotional states, and personal convenience. This is the kind of love with which ‘God so loved the world….’
David asks, in vss 1 and 3 "Is there anyone still left of the house of Saul to whom I can show kindness (hesed) for Jonathan's sake?"
In. Vs. 7
David says, "Don't be afraid," David said to him, "for I will surely show you kindness (hesed) for the sake of your father Jonathan…
And when we are connected to the living God, the God of hesed love… God’s loyal and constant love… we are able to love like God… because his love flows through us…
Just over a year ago, as we know, a troubled milkman named Charles Roberts barricaded himself inside the West Nickel Mine Amish School. He murders five young girls and wounds six others. Roberts committed suicide when police arrived on the scene. It is a dark day for the Amish community of West Nickel Mines, but it is also a dark day for Marie Roberts—the wife of the gunman—and her two young children.
But on the following Saturday, Marie experienced something truly countercultural while attending her husband's funeral. That day, she and her children watched as Amish families—about half of the 75 mourners present—came and stood alongside them in the midst of their own blinding grief. Despite the crime the man had perpetrated, the Amish came to mourn Charles Carl Roberts—a husband and daddy.
Why because that Amish community were connected to Hesed love of God… so they can love like God loves. Like David they can love the family of the man who tried to destroy them because God’s hesed loves inside them.
Not all acts of God’s hesed love are so dramatic.
Steve a manager at a large software company in the Pacific Northwest resolved to visit each of his employees, all six of whom he had not seen face to face in over six months even though they worked in the same building and on the same floor. Steve wanted to tell each of them how much he appreciated them, and name one thing they did especially well.
After the visit from Steve, one of his software engineers, Lenny, presented him with an Xbox gaming console. Steve was taken aback, as he knew Lenny had taken pay cuts over the last year. But he was more surprised to learn that the money had come from the sale of a nine-millimeter pistol—a pistol Lenny had bought months earlier with the intention of killing himself. Lenny told him of his mother's death the previous year, and of his ensuing loneliness and depression:
I started a routine every night after work: eating a bowl of Ramen, listening to Nirvana, and getting the gun out. It took almost a month to get the courage to put the bullets in the gun. It took another couple of months to get used to the feeling of the barrel of the gun on the top of my teeth. For the last few weeks, I was putting ever so slight pressure on the trigger, and I was getting so close, Steve—so close.
Last week, you freaked me out. You came into my cubicle, put your arm around me, and told me you appreciated me because I turn in all my projects early, and that helps you sleep at night. You also said that I have a great sense of humor over e-mail and that you are glad I came into your life.
That night I went home, ate Ramen, and listened to Nirvana—and when I got the gun out, it scared me silly for the first time. All I could think about was what you said—that you were glad I came into your life.
The next day I went back to the pawnshop and sold the gun. I remembered that you had said you wanted the Xbox more than anything, but with a new baby at home could not afford it. So, for my life, you get this game. Thanks, boss.
When we are connected to God’s hesed love we will learn to love as God loves… it may not be super dramatic, it may be small and simple… a word of encouragement, listening to someone, taking a meal to someone…
If you are connected to God you can love you have greater capacity to love because God’s Hesed is in. Hesed is in you to give…
If you don’t feel an overwhelming flood of God’s love flowing through you… I want close with two points of application: start small acts of love… thank people, when you’re raking your leaves—perhaps, rack some of your neighbors, take someone to coffee who’s going through a hard time…
Habits strengthen our neural network. Hebbian theory describes how “brains cells that fire together, wire together.” If you do something enough, it will strengthen the neural networks, so you have greater capacity… If you keep hitting a tennis ball, as your neural networks are strengthened…you’ll greater a capacity to hit the ball… Jesus says you must forgive seventy times seven, signifying our call for complete forgiveness, and in the opinion of some Biblical scholars calling us to “sow and reap” the habit of forgiveness to strengthen our forgiveness neuron…
Keep hitting tennis of love and by sowing in this way… you’ll be strengthening your God given capacity to love…
2nd recall often what Christ has done for you:
Today is Remembrance Day. In the movie, Saving Private Ryan, in one of the opening scenes an elderly veteran and his family are visiting a memorial cemetery in France, an immaculate green rows of white crosses. The veteran stops, falls to his knees, and weeps. He remembers how soldiers laid down their lives on the mission to find and rescue him…
Ryan is looking at the cross with Captain John Miller’s name on, the captain who lead the rescue mission for Ryan who died in the process. His family comes to comfort him, he weeps, and he turns to his wife and he turns to his family, and he says: Tell me that I have had a good life. Tell me that I am a good man. He wants to know that he was worth the loss of the others who died for him. He wants his life to be lived out of gratitude for the sacrifice that others made in order for him to live.
And when we live our lives recognizing that Jesus Christ has sacrificed his life for us; when we had nothing to offer him, when were his enemies so that we could live; when we realize that Christ lives inside us, we can become people like David show God’s hesed to the Mephibosheths in our lives… like David we God’s grace even in a desolate place…
Pray…
A person we need to love?
Ask filled with the love of God.
(The sermon can be heard on line at: www.tenth.ca/audio)
posted by Shigematsu at 1:06 PM
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