the basic message #E302
10/10/04
A group of first-graders and a group of adults were seated at a basketball game. They were asked to count the number of times the players passed the ball. Which group do you think came up with the more accurate count? That wasn't the point of this test conducted by Emory University researchers. During the game, a woman in a white dress carrying a parasol, crossed the court, and disappeared. After the game, the subjects were asked if they had noticed the woman.The results: 75 percent of the first-graders and none of the adults said they noticed her.
Matthew 18
2He called a little child and had him stand among them. 3And
he said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little
children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4Therefore,
whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of
heaven.
Why did the vast majority of the little children notice the woman while none of the adults did? I think the answer is "preoccupation". We adults are often so bogged-down by the cares of the world, we often fail to notice the obvious. There is something very important that we fail to notice in our daily lives, or rather I should say "someone". We fail regularly to see Jesus, just like those people failed to see the woman in the white dress carrying a parasol. Don't expect to see a Jesus that looks like the character from Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ". The Jesus that walks among us each and every day looks much like us. He may take the form of a person who needs us, but then again, he might simply be a bystander that watches us as we ignore the person in need. Regardless, we should be looking for Jesus in either role, since he's here to help us become better people. We can get into semantics as to whether it's Jesus or whether it's the Holy Spirit, but you get the idea.
If I get to Heaven, I'm expecting the incredible. You can have the streets of gold and all of that materialistic junk, just give me the opportunity to interview God. I think I'll have enough questions to keep a conversation going with God for a year before I run out of things to ask. What's a year to God? Not even a grain of sand. I think I'll learn that every human need on earth was indeed orchestrated by God. Some prosperity preachers want us to believe that all good things come from God, and all bad things come from Satan. That very well may be true, but how we define what is good and bad is up for discussion. For example: Is the 16 year-old unwed girl who's already had 3 babies from Satan for from God? It's a bad situation, right? Bad situations don't always equate to bad people- if that were true there wouldn't be a "good" person in the world today. I think it's likely that whenever we see a tragedy like the 16 year-old I mentioned, Jesus is somewhere close by. Did you spot him? He wasn't carrying a parasol, but he was there. He wants to see our reaction, our feelings toward a given situation.
As you walk by the homeless man, did you see Jesus? He was there. When you see a documentary about "Death Row", do you see Jesus among the prisoners? He's there too. Whenever there is heartbreak and human struggle, he's there, whether we see him or not. His call remains the same century after century: "Come, follow me". How can we follow him unless we see him?