“The next day
Jesus decided to go to Galilee.” That first sentence grabbed me and kept me
reading throughout the entire passage, wanting to know what had drawn Jesus to
Galilee. Had he not planned to go there all along? Did he just suddenly made up
his mind to go there? It’s fascinating to think that Jesus could wake up one
morning and say, “We’re going to Galilee,” and
his disciples went along. That’s like me deciding one morning to get up and go
to Payson or Tucson or even downtown Phoenix. It’s not likely to happen, but it
could.
That one statement
makes me think more intently on Jesus the human being. Making decisions is
something that people do multiple times every day. They may decide to go here
or there. They may choose to buy this or
that. They may determine that this is a
correct assumption or proposition and that one is not. Sometimes I wonder how I
came to some of the decisions that I have made, some of which didn’t turn out
quite so well. I’m glad Jesus’s decision
did turn out to be a good one.
I make decisions
based on information that I have available at any given time. If I want to buy a
new car, I research it. Perhaps I saw a
model that I liked and decided to investigate
one like it. In the end, I’m working at determining something which has long-term effects rather than whether I am
going to the movie tonight or stay home and watch Netflix. Jesus was making a
decision that would ultimately lead him to increase his followers both by
direct invitation and also word-of-mouth. He found
Philip and just said, “Follow me.”
Philip, in turn, found Nathaniel and overcoming Nathaniel’s comment, “Can
anything good come out of Nazareth?” Nathaniel became part of Jesus’s band of
disciples.
I wonder on what
Philip and Nathaniel based their decisions to come with Jesus. Were they
undergoing a great logical problem, “If I
do this then that,” or was it a tug somewhere inside that made up their minds
almost instantly that this was the thing to do? There was no doubt as to Jesus’s
charism but was that enough to cause
grown men to drop what they were doing walk away from family, friends, and home
to become wanderers following an itinerant preacher?
Whatever it was,
it seemed to work. Both men saw the Jesus
that we have learned to see through our own experiences.
I remember the
time that I felt a tug in my heart to say yes to Jesus and to walk down the
side aisle from my pew to the front, to act on my profession of faith. It was not
a blinding experience or even terrifically exciting. It was just something that
I needed to do, and I did it. There have
been times in my life when I have been or felt pulled to do one thing or
another, some of which turned out to be excellent
things and some of them which turned out to be disasters. The profession of
faith that I made turned out to be a good thing, something that has been with me almost every single day of the rest
of my life.
Like some of the disciples, there have been periods of doubt,
and moments of fogginess that I could not seem to see through. At times like that, I had to walk step-by-step until I
achieved some type of clarity as to what
I was doing or not doing and what I should be doing or not doing. I’m sure
Nathaniel and Philip, like James, John, and especially Peter, had the same
moments from time to time. But they made that initial acceptance, that initial
decision to follow Jesus and even if things were tough from time to time, they
stayed faithful.
I think this week
I’m going to be intentional about the decisions that I make. Not just little
things like do I clean the house or sit or
read a captivating British thriller. The
house needs cleaning, no matter how
interesting the book that calls to me. Do I need to spend the gas going
somewhere in my truck or can it wait until I have one or two more errands that
I need to run and save the gas for that?
Is that good stewardship? That’s a decision I have to make. It’s one of 100
that I will probably have to make today, tomorrow, and perhaps the next day. But I have the option of making the decision,
and in that way, I can be like Jesus. I
can make a decision.
I invite you to
join me in being thoughtful about the choices
we make, and not just for personal convenience or preference, but about the consequences to not only ourselves
but to others and the entire world. I must
consider how one decision on my part can affect global warming when it’s
no more than a matter of deciding not to drive someplace today to do one errand
when I can wait a day or two and run several. I may use the same amount of gas
to do one trip or two, but at least I will have given the earth a day to
breathe before I add more pollution to it. I think Jesus would approve of that
decision.
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