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| New Orleans, Wealthy People and Jesus |
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People who desire to be wealthy and powerful sometimes look to Jesus for direction. Most of Americans are wealthy in terms of material goods.
Many Americans who are very successful want to see Jesus. They want to get into a position to understand who He really is.
As we climb the ladder of riches, we come to understand that it does not bring salvation.
As we run faster and get ahead of the crowd we realize this does not make us happy.
We keep looking for something and that something is Jesus.
Jesus then looks at us wealthy Americans and says, “Come here to me.”
He says, “I want to live in your big house with you.”
If we choose to see Jesus close up we come to understand true, deep, inner peace. Now this takes a while because of all the trappings of “religion” that are not like Jesus. Once we see who Jesus is close up, we welcome Him into the depths of our hearts. He tells us that he loves us and we have complete freedom of choice. We can leave things the same or make a difference. We can curse the darkness or turn on a light. We can love or we can hate. We can choose to be givers or takers. Once we see the love in the heart of Jesus close up, many of us are choosing again today to love Him.
In allowing Jesus to live in our hearts and homes there is salvation. Salvation here and salvation that cannot be destroyed by death. But what does this salvation look like? It looks like associating with other sinners to bring them up in the way Jesus has done this with us. It looks like giving to the poor. It looks like paying back what we have taken unfairly.
In summary, salvation is seeing Jesus, giving to the poor, paying back what we owe. Why is this so? Because this is where Jesus is working. Salvation is working with Jesus to serve others.
Jesus knew how this world was created. Work to serve others builds up our health, mentally and physically. Free choice. Choices of believing in Jesus as the world’s greatest teacher or someone who came to be a killjoy. Believing in God as loving or God as hard. Believing in hard work and good consequences and laziness having bad consequences. Believing that some things are more important than success, power and wealth.
Jesus believed that standing up for people was more important than success, power and wealth. He stood up in the midst of religion and said, “Stop!!! This is not supposed to be a place where you rob people, this is a place where you pray with people!!!” (My paraphrase of Luke 19.46) Jesus thought to stand for this truth was more important than living beyond age 33.
The King of Kings rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. The common people loved him even as the wealthy and powerful hated him. They cried out words of celebration and praise. Jesus wept. He wept because the leaders were ignorant of true, inner peace. He wept because it was too late for them. Their city they treasured, Jerusalem, would be destroyed. Their god would fall down around them.
Yes, we weep for New Orleans. More than anything we weep for people who have not experienced the salvation of working with Jesus to help the poor and those in need. Those who die without learning that is more blessed to give than receive are lost here and lost there. Pray. Give to the Christian organizations that have the heart of Jesus. Here are two good ones:
http://www.disasterreliefeffort.org/content.asp?CID=38554
http://www.wfrchurch.org/relief/
Larry Wishard, Reflections on Luke 19
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Hope Network Ministries
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email: Hope Network
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