Jesus Came to Serve

    Don’t focus so much on what you love to do that you neglect what needs to be done.  A 3:00 AM diaper change fits in very few sweet spots!  Visiting your sick neighbor might not come naturally to you.  Still, the sick need to be encouraged, garages need sweeping, and diapers need changing.

    The world needs servants.  People like Jesus, who “did not come to be served, but to serve.”  Jesus chose remote Nazareth over center-stage Jerusalem, his dad’s carpentry shop over a marble-columned palace, and three decades of anonymity over a life of popularity.  Jesus selected prayer over sleep, the wilderness over the Jordan. 

    I’d have gone with angels.  I’d have built my apostle team out of Gabriel and Michael.  Not Jesus. He picked people!  When they feared the storm, he stilled it. When they had no food for the multitude, he provided it. 

    Jesus came to serve!  So should we.

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No Normal Friday                             “The Good Shepherd puts the sheep before himself.”  John 10:11, The Message   God is on a cross. The creator of the universe is being executed. Spit and blood are caked to his cheeks, and his lips are cracked and swollen. Thorns rip his scalp. His lungs scream with pain. His legs knot with cramps . . . And there is no one to save him, for he is sacrificing himself. It is no normal six hours . . . it is no normal Friday.                                 ******