Friday,
11/30/12
Andrew
and John were neighbor boys who teamed up tending a long seining net in the Sea
of Galilee. In slack season their fathers allowed the boys to travel ninety
miles south to where John the Baptist was baptizing people in the Jordan. They
served as ushers where the line of people was winding out to where John was
submerging one person at a time. Young John and Andrew were assisting the old
who were not sure of themselves wading out.
Then,
one day the Baptist called out, “Look, there he is, God’s chosen Lamb.”
Jerking
their heads around, the boys caught sight of Jesus walking past on the shore,
and they dropped what they were doing to quickly lift their knees through the
water to the shore. But then, they didn’t know what to do. Holding back, they
were following at a distance, when Jesus turned, and asked,
“What
are you looking for?”
“Rabbi,
where are you staying?
“Come
and see.”
They
went and stayed with him that night.
There
were two parts of that which you could come back to every day. First, to keep
your priorities right, you should be able to give a solid answer to the
question “What are you looking for?”
The
second part of that exchange to which you should give attention is the matter
of staying with the Lord. Some variation of te verb “to stay” appears fifty
times in the twenty-one chapters of John’s Gospel. Its insistent recurrence
reminds us that our Christian lives are ones of staying with the Lord. We are not looking just for that help
over difficulties that is known as Actual Grace. No, we are looking for living
our lives completely at one with the Lord. We are looking to spend every hour
of our lives in the state of Sanctifying Grace.
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