Safe

Going on from that place, he went into their synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, they asked him, "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?"

He said to them, "If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a man than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath."

Then he said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." So he stretched it out and it was completely restored, just as sound as the other. But the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus.

Matthew 12:9-14

Safe

What is safe?

Was Jesus safe?

Was his ministry safe?

Was his message safe?

Was his path safe?

No... It was radical. It was earth shaking, life altering. It was light in the darkness. It was radical. It was dangerous... it was anything but safe.

After many of Jesus' miracles, there is a passage about the reaction of the legalists in mainstream religion. They would flock together and whisper about how dangerous this outsider was. His message challenged the entire balance of the world. He was dangerous. He had to be stopped. They wanted to destroy his message, his mission and in fact, the plotted to KILL HIM.

Jesus still isn't safe. When we choose to follow him... truly follow him, we are going against the flow. We are going counter culture. We are being radicals. We are rebelling against the very system of this world that Jesus fought... and just like Jesus, the powers that be will hate you. They will plot to destroy you. They will lie and cheat. They will slander and they may even try to harm you... but the trick is, the more we are persecuted, the more we are attacked, the more we are beaten, the more into Jesus' image we became. And when we fade and Jesus is left there, that is when we gain. We become something more.

Thank you to all who hate me. God bless all who despised our radical mission to save souls. Thank you to all who whisper and plot. Your actions are refining us daily.