1-23-20 - Following Jesus

(You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.)

"Immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went.., he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him." 

Would you have gone, if Jesus walked by your place of work and said, “Follow me?” Would you have left your job, your family, your home on the promise of “I will make you fish for people?” There wasn’t any security in what Jesus was offering. And yet he said, “Follow me,” and people did. Immediately. How could they be so sure, that they were willing to go immediately? Leave it all, no looking back.

One day I was praying, and had a sense of Jesus saying, “Follow me.” I said, “Where are we going?” A reply came quickly into my mind: “You don’t get an itinerary. You don’t get the route. When I say, ‘Follow me,’ I just mean, ‘Follow me.’ Put your focus on where I am, not where I’m going.” In other words, follow the guide, not the path.

Maybe this shouldn’t have come as a revelation, but I had never thought of it that way. Like many, I want to see what I'm committing to, what’s around the next corner. Jesus invites us not to a walk-about, but to a relationship in which we are transformed and equipped to participate in God’s work of transforming others. In Christ, we are committing to a person, not a program. Kind of like a marriage or becoming a parent… we don’t get much of a road map with those either, do we?

Want to join me in a prayer experiment? For the next week, let’s invite Jesus to lead us each day to the things and people he has blessed or intends to bless. And pray to be alive to that leading – which will mean checking in with him a few times during the day. You might set an alert on your phone or computer, or set up some regular times to stop and pray, “Where we going next, Lord?” And in the evening, take about five minutes to write down where you were led.

I commit myself to doing this. If you do, let me know if you’re surprised by anything. I believe Jesus says, “Follow me,” because he knows where we’re going. And there’s only one way for us to find out…

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