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Saturday, June 30, 2018

The Tragedy of Inertia


We played the pipe for you,
and you did not dance;
we sang a dirge,
and you did not mourn.
- Matthew 11:17 -


From the day of His baptism, Jesus preached, taught, healed the sick, raised the dead and calmed the storm. He also pushed buttons and challenged many to leave their status quo.  Inertia, as defined in the dictionary, is the tendency to do nothing or to remain unchanged.

Through all of His calling out for a response from the people in the places where He had traveled, most had remained unchanged.  Sure, they heard about the miracles and the teachings.  But their lives remained unchanged.  They were content in their struggles.  They were content in their nine-to-five lives.  They were content in their bar-mitzvahs, their birthday parties, their weekly Sabbaths and their Passovers - year in and year out setting a place for Elijah to return someday to announce the Messiah's coming, but never really expecting it to happen.

Then Elijah came, singing the dirge and announcing Messiah's coming.  Then Jesus came, playing the flute.  But how many danced?  How many mourned in the towns where he visited? How many responded to Yahweh's call for a response?  Apparently not many, for Jesus lamented over Capernaum, Bethsaida and Korizim's lack of repentance.

Like the cripple at the pool of Bethsaida (John 5), we can get so stuck in our lives that we fail (or refuse) to see when a breath of fresh air from the Holy Ghost comes to change our lives forever!  We continue with our picket signs, our daily banter, our bills, our taxes, our chores, our TVs, our sports games... The list goes on ad-nauseum.

If we miss His coming to us to break the mortal cycles, this New Life will move on without us.

3 comments:

  1. Wow, Chris, very profound. The inertia of apathy is one of the great enemies of the King and the gravitational pull of his kingdom.

    ReplyDelete

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