Posts Tagged ‘Matthew 26’
When someone imposes on you unfairly
Her comment took my breath away.
I sat in a circle amongst a team of people who—for years—gave their time and talent to lead a local branch of an international ministry. The hours we invested every week in personal study, phone calls, leadership meetings, and the actual ministry activities were many. We all counted them a joy and privilege, a way to serve God and His people with the gifts He’d given us.
And then, one day, I surfaced a challenge to our team. I’d been, in my eyes anyway, mistreated and imposed upon unnecessarily by one of the people we served. I wanted my fellow leaders’ consolation and commiseration. I wanted them to validate my injured feelings and defend me, saying how much I didn’t deserve that treatment… how wrong that other person was.
Which is why her comment was so jarring to me—it was so different than what I wanted:
Read MoreNecessarily Negative
Was Jesus an optimist or a pessimist?
Surely He was an optimist, right? After all… isn’t that the more “desirable” of the two possibilities? Being God and all, He must have been whatever is considered superior. Our American culture values the extravert and the optimist. And there’s a Christian sub-culture that teaches that all Christians should be optimists. (“Because of the hope that we have…”)
But I don’t think so. Rather, I contend that Jesus was the one and only person who could be a dead-center realist. Read More