I'm thinking today of a very specific verse.
It's kind of like, it's nested in a story. It's
about a paralyzed man who is before Jesus, and
Jesus forgives his sins. He says, your sins are
forgiven. And then they're really like challenging
him in their heart, and they're wondering, how
can Jesus say that? I mean, that's sort of, you
know, blasphemy or whatever. And then the man
is still laying there on his mat, paralyzed,
and Jesus says, which is easier, to say to the
paralyzed man, your sins are forgiven, or to
say, get up and pick up your pallet and walk?
And then he says, but so you can know that the
Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive
sins. And then there comes this verse. He looks
at the paralyzed man and he says, I say to you,
get up, pick up your pallet and go home. The
man immediately gets up and he takes his pallet
and he walks away. Now, this causes all kinds
of problems, of course. And that's the way it
was with Jesus during his public ministry. Everything
that he did that was good for one person caused
a lot of trouble with other people. And I think
it's a little bit like that in life. That's why
people say no good deed goes unpunished, because
there's always complications every time you try
to do good. But guess what? We've got to do good.
You can only overcome evil by doing good. And
so it is our job to be going around helping people
pick up their pallet and go home. If you see
a need, I'm not talking that you have to give
up everything that you are, everything that you
have, or really sacrifice or whatever, but you
ought to want to meet that need. We ought to
want to help a person get moving again. So I'm
encouraging you today that you would, I would,
that we would all get moving again, that we would
make a difference again. We remember that to
be a city is to be in community. To be in community
is to care about your neighbor. It's a Christian
foundation. It's not stodgy.