I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Luke 9.

    When Jesus said to His audience that they needed to “take up your cross daily” it would not have been a vague metaphor. That would have had vivid meaning to them as they would have been familiar with seeing condemned men carrying their cross has they were taken to be executed. Jesus is telling us that in order to serve Him we need to do things which we will no more desire than those men desired to carry their cross. If we wish to serve Jesus we will need to willingly go to our deaths, sacrificing our wants and desires in order to perform God’s will. If we try to avoid doing so, we will lose our lives and our very souls. The only way we can preserve our lives and our souls is to willingly give them up to serve God. One of the main characters in a book series I love put it this way, “It does us no good to give up our heart to obtain our heart’s desire.” As much as we might dread what we expect to find at the end of the path which Jesus leads us down, the end of every other path is worse. However, Jesus also tells us that we will find that the end of the path He is leading us down will be less dreadful and more glorious than we imagine. Yes, there will be suffering, but beyond the suffering is glory.

    I have been struggling with what to say here because I am going to use an example involving someone who I know reads this blog. Here Jesus tells us that the least among us is the greatest. He says this in the context of telling us that those who welcome a child in His name welcome Him, and that those who welcome Him welcome God the Father. We have a tendency to read Jesus as saying that those who are least will be greatest, as if you may be the least now, but you will be the greatest later. However, that is not what Jesus said. He said, “Whoever IS the least among you IS the greatest.” This is not that somehow in the future God will make you great because you are least. No, this is the least are really the greatest.
    Now for the part that makes me nervous. I, and a couple of other friends, run a practice for a local group. After our last practice I was talking with someone who feels that they are not as good as they should be. They feel like they are the least able person at our practice (for the purpose of this blog I am going to assume that this feeling reflects reality, although that is open to debate). As a result of this, they think it is a waste of time for them to continue. Yet I cannot help but think that Jesus is telling those of us who think we are better than this person at this activity that we are wrong. He is also telling this person that because they are the least at this activity that they are actually the greatest. The thing about it is that I almost know what He means in this context. This person, who thinks they are so terrible at this activity, is my favorite teacher of newbies who are just starting to understand what they are doing because when she works with them she does not intimidate them, as some of our members who are more confident of their skill do(myself included, not because I am that good, but because I am that confident). And because she more naturally fences down to them in a way that encourages them to stretch their ability. And all of that is irrelevant to my point. Jesus is telling us that when we think we are the least is actually when we are the greatest.