SCRIPTURE: Psalm 121:1
(CEB)
I raise my eyes
toward the mountains. Where will my help come from?
STORY:
People need people. Laurie was about three when one night
she requested my aid in getting undressed. I was downstairs and she was
upstairs, and ... well. "You know how to undress yourself," I
reminded. "Yes," she explained, 'but sometimes people need people
anyway, even if they do know how to do things by themselves."
OBSERVATION:
Barbra Streisand’s voice embraces the words with a tender touch of a true
artist:
People,
People who need people
Are the luckiest people in the
world
Were children needing other
children
And yet letting our grown-up
pride
Hide all the need inside
Acting more like children than
children
Speaks
to the reality of your world and mine.
We are
a truly stubborn bunch aren’t we? We’ve bought into the fallacy that since we
are “adults” we don’t need anybody else. “I can do it myself!” It is the old
“go it alone” syndrome. So, there we are adults all of us behaving as children
in an adult world.
One can
almost hear the disciples, after the resurrection, asking the question: “Where
will my help come from?” They were trying to sort out the dynamics of
resurrection … of a dead teacher and friend coming back from the dead. Talk
about thinking outside the box, God sure did that with this new reality. It is
a paradigm shift of major proportions. This new reality requires all of us to
think differently … to act different … to admit that we cannot handle the truth
by ourselves.
Oh, life-after-death
is okay when we think about eternity, but here on earth? … in the middle of
flesh-and-blood reality? You’ve got to be kidding. Sure we need people to help
in processing this new thing. Even for us who live on the other side of
resurrection morning. We’ve had centuries to get use to this new reality, but
it still stumps us. Maybe that is why we easily return to the mundane of church
administration instead of opening ourselves to becoming true followers. It
appears to be more fun simply being a fan … a cheerleader … than a full fledge
participant. The cost of being a follower is too great. We’ve got to believe
the unbelievable.
We
still need God to do for us what we think we can do for ourselves. That’s the
“ouch-factor” of resurrection morning.
PRAYER:
Where does our help come from? Help us realize that even
when we can do it ourselves we still need your help. After all it is either
that way or continuing to act like we know what we are doing and allow the
child in us to take over.
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