Jesus Walks

I joined the Women in Study class this morning to see pictures of Ellen Quisenberry’s recent trip to Israel.  What a moving experience it must be to walk that land!  Ellen’s pictures and narration brought me more closely into the Holy Land and moved me to see what Jesus must have seen.

I’ve never had a problem with believing that Jesus the man really existed.  But to actually see the landscapes he saw, the valleys he crossed, the side of the well where he may have rubbed his hand, the walls he leaned against, the same trails that he walked – I really had a new realization that here, in this place, a miracle lived.  Jesus walked. He walked in that relatively unchanged land.  A man with a specific accent and fragrance and hair color and sense of humor once had the same view of the lake that I saw.

I’m blessed to know, and know something about, a lot of individual people. Most of them I meet at church or in the neighborhood. But when I visit a home, I get a whole different feel for their uniqueness as people.  I see their photos on the wall or their books on the shelf or the garden they’ve cultivated so lovingly.  The context helps “flesh out” the whole person.     

So I’m thankful and hopeful – thankful to Ellen for showing us Jesus’ context, and hopeful that I might see it someday myself.  In the meantime, I remember the words that Jesus spoke: Have you believed because you have seen me?  Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe. (John 20:29)

We don’t have to see Israel to know where Jesus walks. He moves not just in those places where Palestinian dust swirled around his ankles.  Jesus walks among us today.  The rapper Kanye West wrote and rapped:

To the hustlers, killers, murderers, drug dealers, even the strippers
(Jesus walks with them)
To the victims of welfare – for we living in hell here – hell yeah
(Jesus walks with them)
Now hear ye, hear ye – want to see Thee more clearly
I know he hear me when my feet get weary
‘Cause we're the almost nearly extinct!
We rappers are role models? We rap, we don't think
I ain't here to argue about his facial features
Or here to convert atheists into believers
I'm just trying to say – the way school need teachers,
The way Kathie Lee needed Regis – that's the way I need Jesus.

Is Jesus walking with you?

   Pastor Larry