Jesonian: Reasonable (Part 14) Living … March 6th, 2016

 Jonathots Daily Blog

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She had found her place.

She was satisfied.

She had substance and purpose.

Then, all at once, life, which had promised only good, interrupted with pain.

She was bleeding–not excessively. Just continually. Everything that was once pure became tainted by the introduction of this new evil.

Her sense of solvency was challenged. Now her money had only one purpose:

“Heal me. Stop the bleeding. Give me back my life as I knew it.”

A change was necessary. She went from having a life to needing to live.

For to live is finding a way to continue your life when it threatens to depart.

• She sought cures.
• She studied.
• She examined.
• She trolled for possibilities.

Expensive.

For twelve years, she struggled to find a treatment while simultaneously growing weaker as her affliction drained away the essence of her will and her finance.

Life had turned on her. Unfortunately, her passion and efforts to live also failed.

She remained sick as the doctors got rich.

She found herself languishing in poor health.

Her instinct to live left her bankrupt and teetering on death.

What now?

What do you do when life turns sour, and efforts to live are foiled?

There is one choice that remains: move towards living.

Go where there is still the energy of loving and pursuing. Escape away to any living possibility.

Because living is endurance. It is deciding to add joy to the process so as not to grow weary in such well-doing. She decides to leave nothing untried.

She hears about a “giver of life.” The rumors are mixed. Some deem this miracle man to be a savior, while others insist he is the son of hell.

But living is not a guarantee–rather, a desire to continue in hope.

So she makes a plan.

Planning makes her feel better–it helps her to realize that she still has some control.

She will touch the hem of this healer’s garment, with the anticipation that mere proximity to his virtue will grant her a cleansing from all sickness.

Her idea is childlike.

Her organization, tenuous.

But her faith, willingness and joy–persistent.

She pulls her plan off–and amazingly, it works.

She is whole.

She is free to go back to life, or to return to her city to live. But it seems ridiculous to merely pass time when living is available.

So she curls up in prayer, thanks God for His intervention, and allows herself … to be born again.

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Jesonian: Depraved or Saved? … August 3, 2014

 Jonathots Daily Blog

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For those who are saved by grace, it would be wonderful to see them become more graceful. Otherwise, salvation by grace generates an insecure people who have lost hope, and threaten to become a disgrace.

What is salvation?

Is it as the fundamentalists believe–an admission of our entire, depraved, sinful nature, which has to be reborn through baptism so that we become acceptable in the eyes of God?

Or is it as the mainline denominational people believe–a submission to the teachings and philosophy of Jesus, while applying the traditions of the church?

I am most comfortable looking at salvation through the eyes of Jesus rather than the permutations brought about through denominations.

A Centurion once sent word to him, asking Jesus to heal his servant. He believed Jesus could do it from a distance, since he, the Centurion, felt that he was unworthy of a personal visitation. Jesus said he had never seen such great faith.

There was a woman at a well with five previous husbands, and was living with a man, but became the conduit for a revival in her town because she brought her curiosity, which was accounted unto her for salvation.

Zacchaeus decided to make reparations for all he had stolen from people, and Jesus said “this day salvation had come to his house.”

The woman caught in adultery hung around after the crowd departed, to receive a final verdict from Jesus. He confirmed her salvation by telling her that he did not condemn her, but challenged her to go and sin no more.

The woman with the issue of blood brought a plan. “If I just touch the hem of his garment, I’ll be well…”

The Prodigal Son came to himself and offered common sense. “I would be better off being a servant in my father’s house than starving out here in the wilderness.”

• Faith.
• Curiosity.
• Reparations.
• Humility.
• A plan.
• Common sense.

These are all part of the process of salvation. When we believe that the depravity of man must be established in order to prove that God’s grace has been extended, then we close the door to those who don’t require a complete overhaul, but instead, just a way to identify the source of the beautiful life that God has given them.

We must be careful that in the pursuit of proving that God is great, we allow for the disciples of Jesus to mature instead of becoming more meager in their character, to bolster the doctrine. Because as the Gospel of John tells us, “to as many as believed in him, gave he the power to become the sons of God.”

Salvation is an empowering experience. It is taking our spirit, which has been unplugged, and uniting it with the Spirit of God … to recreate the beauty of Eden in our soul.

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