My thoughts (Penny Dean):

Do the Right Thing

For the past few months, I’ve been keeping a dream journal. It’s full of vehicles, weirdness and distant relatives. No unearthed mysteries or deep insights for me. Some self-help experts suggest posing questions to your subconscious before going to sleep. Your dreams are then supposed to provide answers to your dilemma. I’ve never had much luck with that. Nor are my dreams anything like the one Joseph had. He had an angel tell him exactly what to do.

The Message describes Joseph as “noble,” an apt word for a man who did not want to disgrace his betrothed even though she was pregnant with someone else’s child. Before the angel appeared in his dream and told him not to fear, Joseph “was trying to figure a way out” of this conundrum. I can imagine him deep in thought as he worked, or tossing and turning as he slept. Yet legally, Joseph was within his rights to break the engagement. No one would have blamed him for that. In fact, they would have believed he had done the right thing. But Joseph did as the angel bade him: he took Mary as his wife, named the baby “Jesus”, and raised Jesus as his own.

Friends and family doubtlessly questioned Joseph’s judgment, but he plowed ahead anyway. He knew that doing the right things doesn’t always make sense. Often it can be quite hard. Joseph had to live with himself and I doubt somehow he could’ve had he broken his engagement to Mary. He realized his life was between him and God and no one else.

Reaching a conclusion I can live with usually comes from making a series of small choices — not from my dreams. As I work through my quandary, making small decisions along the way, the answer to the larger question becomes clearer. Even then, the right thing doesn’t always make perfect sense. In fact, it may take months or years before I can look back and say, “I did the right thing back then.” Meanwhile, like Joseph, I try to make choices I can live with. Knowing my life is between me and God, I have to do what I believe to be the right thing. And so do you.

Thought for the day: Do you feel as though some issue in your life is too big for you to handle? What small choice can you make today to make that situation a little more bearable?

We encourage you to include a time of prayer with this reading. If you need a place to get started, consider the guidelines on the How to Pray page.

My thoughts (Penny Dean):

Our neighbor is a pirate. I don’t mean to say that she lives on the Black Pearl or that we’ve seen her burying things in her backyard. Rather, she is often coming in to money, her most recent windfall being about $3,000. And I doubt that she hoards her treasure (or buries it) as we would expect a pirate to do. But, as I write this, tornado warning sirens are going off (which makes writing this piece easier since this chapter is chock full of good things), and I wonder what treasure I would save if disaster struck.

The obvious image that comes to mind when I hear the word “treasure” is money. This image is followed closely by gold and jewels. Since I’m only just starting a new job, there’s not a whole lot of cash in the house and very little gold or jewels. I wonder how much my college class ring would fetch at one of those gold-buying places?

If treasure is wealth or something valuable, I might save important documents like deeds or car titles or my two degrees that I don’t use. Or I might save some personal items that I value like the Lord of the Rings set my brother gave me or my box of journals.

All the valuables I’ve listed so far are replaceable. Loved ones are not. I believe most of us would, in an emergency, try to get our partners, children, and pets (including a smelly hound dog) to safety first. In spite of disagreements, differences, and annoying habits, their lives are precious (both to them and to us). They are invaluable and irreplaceable. We wouldn’t want to live without them. I would argue that any human life is worth more than money or prestige or the opportunity to be right. Life is irreplaceable. Once it’s gone, that’s it.

But what if someone doesn’t feel valued by us? What if we neglect even those we purport to love, or worse, throw them under the bus to get what we want (which is probably something that won’t last)? I would hope that, because it hurts them too much to stay with us, our loved ones would find their own ways to safety — even if that meant leaving us behind.

Pirates have to bury their treasure or hide it in a cave so thieves can’t steal it. Verse 21, according to The Message reads: “The place where your treasure is, is the place you will most want to be, and end up being.” Therefore, a pirate would end up living in the cave, away from other people and sunlight. I could live in my fire-proof safe with my meager valuables but that would be lonely and confining. When I think of good times, I don’t think of these replaceable things. I think, instead, of friends and loved ones — those who are irreplaceable — and that’s where I want to be. I can’t imagine heaven without them.

Thought for the day: Where is your treasure? Is that where you most want to be?

We encourage you to include a time of prayer with this reading. If you need a place to get started, consider the guidelines on the How to Pray page.

My thoughts (Penny Dean):

This is one of Jesus’ best-known parables. The phrase “Good Samaritan” has entered the vernacular to the point that even hospitals are so named. Those of us who have been in church for years can recite the story with just the right amount of scorn for the Levite and the priest. Yet how often are we just like the two who passed by, in spite of having been beat up and left for dead ourselves?

Jesus only describes the victim as “a man.” To the religious scholar, he probably meant a Jew and I see no reason to debate that. Yet this critically wounded man was ignored and avoided by his religious brethren — the equivalent of being ignored by one’s pastor and deacon. Actually, it’s more than just ignoring, it’s scrupulously avoiding.

But along comes the Samaritan. Samaritans were an anathema to the Jews because they were only half Jewish. While most of Israel had been in captivity in Babylon centuries before, those who remained had intermarried with surrounding cultures, resulting in the Samaritans. To a Jew, the Samaritan was his religious opposite, someone he would never have expected to help in his time of need. For me, this would be the equivalent of a televangelist coming to my rescue. The Samaritan in the parable transcended the years of animosity between his sect and the Jews. He helped the victim because he saw him as a man just like himself and felt compassion towards him.

Clearly the priest and the Levite couldn’t set their baggage aside to help the man in the ditch. Even the religious scholar, whose question prompted Jesus’ parable, didn’t quite get it at the end. He gave the correct answer, that the Samaritan was the victim’s neighbor, but he could not call him “the Samaritan” or “the man who treated him kindly.” He was still having difficulty grasping that a Samaritan could do good and blandly refers to him as “the one.”

How easy it is to judge the priest and the Levite and the religious scholar! We can point accusingly at them and say, “You could’ve/should’ve/would’ve…” but the old adage is true: we would still have three fingers pointing back at ourselves. I would like to think that I would stop to help the televangelist if he were in the ditch, but that would mean setting down my own religious baggage and the differences between us. That’s hard. That would require me to see what he and I have in common, which might only be our shared humanity. That should be enough.

Thought for the day: Is there someone you resolutely avoid because they are not like you or because their opinion differs from yours? What would happen if you noticed your commonalities rather than your differences?

We encourage you to include a time of prayer with this reading. If you need a place to get started, consider the guidelines on the How to Pray page.

My thoughts (Penny Dean):

I work as an auditor for an oil company. That means I have to have proof: proof that a manager knows his inventory, proof that he’s doing his job, and proof that the store is operating profitably. I cannot do my job based on guesswork, hunches, or good intentions. There must be black and white evidence. I must know.

Yet my favorite bible passage is about belief, which is not as concrete as knowledge.

Knowledge, according to the Oxford Dictionary of Current English, is the “awareness gained by experience of a fact or situation.” I have to perform an audit to know the facts surrounding a store or its manager.

Belief, on the other hand, is defined as “a feeling that something exists or is true.” I can believe a manager is doing a good job or a store is well-run without auditing a location. But, if I believe a store has a problem that requires an audit, I must obtain knowledge first-hand. In other words, belief often leads to knowledge.

In these two verses, Jesus says, “Start somewhere. If you can do that, you can do anything.” The father who brought his son to Jesus for healing had already started: He brought his son to Jesus for healing. Then took the next step and asked for help. “Help my unbelief.”

One step at a time we can move from belief to knowledge. That willingness makes all things possible.

Thought for the day: What first step do you believe you need to take?

We encourage you to include a time of prayer with this reading. If you need a place to get started, consider the guidelines on the How to Pray page.

My thoughts (Penny Dean):

My dad is the only person I’ve ever heard say, “I have no regrets.” I tend to believe, rather, that we’ve all done or said things we regret. I know I have. Almost two years ago, I totally mishandled a situation with my then-best friend. I was trying to protect her and, as a result, ended up grievously hurting her instead. I have lost her friendship and consequently wish every day that I had acted differently.

Judas, I believe, was in a similar situation. I doubt that when he agreed to betray Jesus, or when he kissed Jesus in the garden, that he knew the ramifications of his actions. Only when he realized Jesus was doomed did he see that his actions had major long-term consequences. One of those consequences was that Judas’ name was forever linked with two words that are tinged with malice: betrayer and traitor.

Yet we don’t know the whole story. Why did Judas decide to betray Jesus? Was it just for the money? I find it interesting that he apparently spent none of the silver before he tried to give it back. Maybe, as in The Gospel of Judas, Judas believed he was doing the right thing to preserve the faith he knew. Or, as in Nikos Kazanzakis’ The Last Temptation of Christ, Judas had planned his betrayal with Jesus in order to bring about Jesus’ certain death and fulfill prophecy.

I have two points to make: First of all, nothing is ever quite what it seems. The gospel accounts were written decades after the events and Judas could be seen in hindsight as being greedy. I did not lie to my best friend out of cruelty or hatred, even though she believes differently. I did it out of love, to protect her. And as a result, like David regarding Bathsheba (Psalm 51:3), “my sin is ever before me” because I work with her nearly every day.

Secondly, God can take our mistakes and use them for good. If Judas hadn’t betrayed Jesus, where would Christianity be? It would have come about, but would it look the same? I don’t know what good will come of my situation with my former best friend, but I have to believe that her broken heart and my continuing remorse are not the end. I am not without hope. This may be the only way, however, for me to let go of something that stood between me and God.

According to Matthew, Judas hung himself after attempting to return the blood money. There was no opportunity for forgiveness or making amends. On the other hand, Jesus was descended from David and Bathsheba — living proof that good can and does come from mistakes.

Thought for the day: If you could re-do something from your past, what would it be and why? Have you ever found a blessing in disguise?

We encourage you to include a time of prayer with this reading. If you need a place to get started, consider the guidelines on the How to Pray page.

My thoughts (Penny Dean):

“Come here and let Aunt Midge give you a great big bear hug!” she would bellow every time I went to her house. Regardless of how much time had passed since my last visit, my aunt would greet me the same way. And it wasn’t just me. Aunt Midge had no children of her own, so all kids were up for grabs. As I said at her funeral, she was everyone’s favorite aunt.

Although Aunt Midge was my mom’s elder sister, they didn’t resemble each other much. My mom is petite and thin whereas Midge was big-boned and cushy. I suppose that’s why these verses remind me of my aunt. She would gather children up like a hen gathering her chicks. In her lap, we were warm and safe and she would have fought to the death for us.

That’s how Jesus felt about Jerusalem. He wanted to enfold the citizenry into his arms and protect them, but they wouldn’t have it. Rather, they had a history of killing prophets and messengers. Four chapters later in Matthew, they killed Jesus, too. There on the cross, he spread out his wings, so to speak, making himself vulnerable, reaching out one last time, and died.

Jesus chose this common image of a mother hen, I think, because it is a symbol with which we can all identify. Even if you’re not a farm girl, you can imagine a mother hen clucking over her brood, gathering them to her, and scolding those who got too close to her darlings. The image is one of warmth and security and love.

But, like Jerusalem, we can choose to ignore such an embrace. We can choose to be the rugged individualist, the lone wolf, the desperado making it through life alone. We can even choose to butcher the hen and have her for dinner. What a lonely, cold, hard life that would be without God or comfort or safety.

I speak from experience. I let go of God in my twenties, but God’s arms were open the whole time I was gone. When I finally came limping back, God gave me a great big bear hug and swept me under those wings. I may peep out occasionally, but I don’t stray far.

Thought for the day: In what ways are you turning from God? What would happen if you let God help you?

We encourage you to include a time of prayer with this reading. If you need a place to get started, consider the guidelines on the How to Pray page.