He Walked A Little Different

When you feel you don't quite fit the "norm", consider this: (borrowed from A Renegade's Guide to God, by David Foster)

"Jesus was born in a backwoods village. His mother was a peasant teenage virgin who came up pregnant under questionable circumstances. He worked in obscurity in his father's carpenter shop until He was thirty, after which he became in interant preacher. He never owned a home, never wrote a book, and never organized an army. He avoided big cities, except for Jerusalem during the last days of His life. He walked everywhere He went and traveled less than two hundred miles from the obscure village in which He was born. When He did go public, He chose a rag-tag group of twelve unlettered, underachieving men, some of whom were of questionable character. He was famous for His constant head-butting with the religious ruling elite of His day. He was a renegade of the first order. When it came to making all the wrong people mad, He excelled. His message was like oil and water when compared to the religious norms of His day. But to the common man He was seen as "every man's" champion while at the same time He was feared and hated by the religious elite.

conts~ When the winds of public opinion turned ill against Him, the cheering crowds dispersed and His friends stepped ito the shadows. When questioned, Peter, the leader of the disciples and one of the inner-circle, denied even knowing Him. Without just cause, Jesus ws handed over to the avarice and caprice of His enemies. He went through the mockery of an illegal trial. He was publicly beaten and humiliated. He was forced to carry His cross outside the city to the top of a garbage dump. There, they nailed Him to a cross, gouged it into the ground, and sat down to watch Him die."

endquote

Jesus didn't quite fit the mold of the "norm" of His day either. & Jesus wasn't about "religion", He was about relationship. & He gave His life so you and I could even have one.

He hung with all the "don't know no betters" because He wanted them to know truth. He scolded the Saducees and Pharisees, the "religious" rulers of the time, saying that they did more to keep people away . . .

For those last three plus years He went about the Father's business going from town to town, place to place teaching, talking, supping, relating, praying for, healing people, . . . so that they might know Him, and be able to be in relationship.

Though His own people did not understand until really after His death, . . . then He took it to the cross.

& When He hung, bruised and battered and drained of His human life's blood---------
the block (the veil) between us and God was ripped right in half.

-So that we might know Him, and we might go and teach, talk, sup, relate, pray for, see Him heal . . . so that they might know Him and be able to have relationship . . .

He isn't about religion. We make God very small when we stick Him in our boxes.

Truth is, He never intended Christians gathering together as more than a place to be taught and refreshed and to be in the company of others who also believed, so then again, could all "go". & We do need that. There is strength there and accountability to stay on the path. But . . .

What He called us for is outside the doors, outside our own lives, and certainly outside of of tiny ideas formed by human minds.

You can't put God in a box. Don't try. But- Do yourself a favor, & don't put yourself solely in one either. GOD BLESS