June 8, 2015

“Peter began to say to him, “Look, we have left everything and followed you.” Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.” Mark 10:28-31

There is a movie that my daughter has watched several times titled “16 Wishes”, or something like that. In this movie, the lead girl is turning sixteen. On her birthday she looks at a wish list she once made of the things she hoped for by the time she turned sixteen. As the day begins, things are not as they should be — at least in her own mind. So, looking at her list, she lights a candle for one of her “wishes”, blows out the candle, and the wish comes true. At first these wishes are positive, but as the movie continues, she finds there are more negative consequences to her wishes than positive. So, for her last wish, she wishes that things return to “normal” and with that, when everything does return to normal, she learns to be more of “servant”, and being happy with what she has, rather than “having it all”.

“Having it all” or wishing to “have it all” is opposite to the attitude Jesus wants us to have. Jesus wants us to be servants of others, and living a life where we are agents of “doing for others” rather than living a life doing only for ourselves. And Jesus modeled that kind of life — putting others first, preaching about how the last shall be first and the first last, and even assuming the role of a servant when he washed the feet of the disciples.

What do you wish for today? If you had one wish, in your relationship with Christ, what would you wish for?

Pastor Dave