ODJ: desperate
July 23, 2011
How can they hear about Him unless someone tells them? (Romans 10:14).
READ: Mark 2:1-12
Tom Thompson works for the charitable organization World Help. One day as he sat in a boat on the Ganges River, he saw people ceremoniously dumping ashes from incinerated corpses into the same water where people bathed, collected drinking water, brushed their teeth, washed their clothes, and disposed of sewage in the most old-fashioned way imaginable. (Don’t think too hard about it.) Yet no one thought anything about it, for the river is deemed holy.
Tom reflected on the desperation of anything that seeks ultimate fulfillment without Jesus, and he prayed, quite naturally, Thank you, Lord, for saving me from this. Then he had an epiphany: He had often thought about the fact that Jesus loves him. But he had forgotten that Jesus loves them.
Tom applies another desperate situation to the one he observed on the Ganges. In Mark 2, a group of men had a friend who was paralyzed. Jesus was preaching at a house in Capernaum at the time. Unable to get him into the house, the friends resorted to desperate measures. They climbed on top of the house, cut a hole in the roof, and lowered the paralyzed man in front of Jesus. “Seeing their faith, Jesus said to the paralyzed man, ‘My child, your sins are forgiven’ ” (v.5). And then Jesus went the extra mile. He healed him physically as well as spiritually (vv.10-11).
Tom uses that point to challenge followers of Jesus to exchange their comfortable brand of Christianity for something radically world-changing. “Do something that scares you,” he says. “Step out of your comfort zone.”
Desperate times call for desperate measures. We may never cut a hole in a roof to bring someone to Jesus, but what are we willing to do or give up in order to bring others to Him? —Tim Gustafson
Where do you sense desperation in this world? In your own life? In others? How can this help lead you to radical Christianity instead of comfortable religion?
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