The people who had been with Jesus when He had fed them, continued in the same place, maybe hoping that He would do it again or possibly more. Now, if Jesus had fed 5,000 men and possibly several times that, in total, they would have not been able to get into boats and go across the Sea of Galilee to look for Him again. Maybe just a hard core of those stayed close by to be fed by Him again.
Regardless, a group of those bread-filled people went looking for Him when they realized that He and His disciples were gone. Jesus had gotten away form them, as He knew they would try to make Him some sort of a leader (or King) over them. The people must have felt that this was too good a deal to let slip away.
So the question comes to me, Why do I get up early to do this exercise in Scripture reading and journaling? Jesus has shown up in the past, and I look for Him again. I know my day will be better if I start out this way. I do not want it to be just an exercise, a talisman that I can do something to make my day more meaningful. I want to see Jesus, to hear Him, to feel His presence and to really know Him.
Sometimes, like this morning, it is a struggle. I know what I want, but, for some reason, Jesus does not come, as I think He should. I sit, I read, I try to pray, but nothing happens. Is my heart right? Am I selfishly seeking? Am I just like the people in the Gospel story, looking to be filled again so I can leave this time and feel satisfied? Satisfied that I can say that I have done this time here, and can now go about my day?
Perhaps this beginning is just to keep me thinking as I drive to Hoboken this morning for the Kairos meeting. I hope so, I really do hope so.
After breakfast, I drove on up the road to the meeting. On the way, I kept the radio off, just to be able to think about why I was doing certain things. Were my motives pure or was it all for self?
My thoughts came around to the next Kairos in prison and all the ones that had preceded it. I thought about all the inmates who had come on those weekends, and what my feelings were and should be concerning them. Each man that comes is an individual, with his own hurts, problems, hopes and fears. We meet them on their home ground and have a God-given responsibility to treat them as Jesus would. True, they are inmates in a prison, but they are not just a number in a system. They deserve our notice, our respect for the man and not the crime they committed. They need to know that they are worth something in God's eyes, and we will treat them that way. We know they are lonely, sometimes treated like cattle, sometimes shunned by family and friends on the outside, a voice crying in the wilderness with no one hearing.
The Kairos motto is Listen, Listen, Love Love. Really listen and really love. Nothing shows God's love for men as much as really listening to them as they speak. If they can see that we mean what we say , that we care about them as men, then they are more open to listening to God also.
Matthew 25:36 says that "I was in prison and you visited me". The people asked "when were you in prison and we visited you?", and Jesus answered, "when you have done this to the least of these, you have done it unto me".
It is not whether I say I care or not, it is whether they realize by my actions that I do.
Now, can I draw a line from the feeding of the 5,000 to an encounter in prison? It may not be a straight line, but it is there if I look hard enough. The mind is strange in its ways, sometimes.
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