Dust of the Rabbi

I read recently in the book of Mark about Jesus’ calling of the disciples. I have heard the verse in question used several times in teaching, talking about the level commitment to follow Jesus or something like that. I think the text over simplifies it. Mark 1:16-18 says “As Jesus walked along the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon, and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fisherman. “Come, follow me” Jesus said, “For I will make you fishers of men. At once, they left their nets and followed him.” In all honesty, after reading that, it almost makes them sound like they were possessed or some type of zombies who just instantly heard Jesus’ call and dropped everything they were doing. I look at that text, and wonder what that can mean for me, or even what that meant at the time. Right? How do I drop my net now and follow Jesus? Do I just stop working one day and start reading my bible instead? After doing some digging, I was able to come up with an explanation as to why they would have acted in such a way.

Credit: Harry Anderson 1906-1996

Jesus was raised in an area called Galilee. 1st century Jews in this area had a relatively strict educational system that was pretty much centered around the Torah. The Torah (Which means The Teaching, or The Instruction) consisted of the first 5 books of today’s bible. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. They believed that God spoke to Moses, and gave them these 5 books as instruction for their lives. Around the age of 4-5, Jewish boys and girls would start their education on the Torah at a local synagogue. They would learn about, read, write, and memorize the Torah till about age 10. By age 10, most all students had the entire Torah memorized…all 5 books. This absolutely blows me away. I’m not even sure how well I knew how to read at age 10. Anyway, this schooling was called Beth Sefer. At the end of Beth Sefer, girls and most boys would then stay home and begin tending to the home, or learning the family trade. This was as far as most boys made it however, the best of the best from Beth Sefer, would begin what was called Beth Midrash. In Beth Midrash, students would continue to grow in their knowledge of the Torah, as well as memorize and learn interpretations of the Oral Torah, which included Genesis, all the way through Malachi. This astonished me. That is 39 books, totally memorized, verse for verse. In my Bible that is 1380 pages! Why would they do this? Well they didn’t exactly have Kinko’s or any other easy way for them to own copies of these materials, so they would memorize them. This also allowed them to have discussions about the text, where all parties could literally call on any verse, just like if they had one of our bibles sitting in front of them. That is incredible to me. Anyway, by the time they finished Beth Midrash, students were typically 14-15 years of age. Some would then leave to go continue learning their family trade, and work for their family, while the very best of the very best would pursue teaching under a rabbi, which was called Beth Talmid. To pursue the teaching of a rabbi, students would basically go to that rabbi, and ask to be his disciple. The rabbi would then grill the students asking them questions from the Torah, as well as interpretations of the text. The students weren’t just looking to know what the rabbi knows, they wanted to be like that rabbi, and learn to do what the rabbi did. Rabbis often times had different interpretations of what certain text meant, and where one rabbi might see a verse meaning one thing, another rabbi could see it differently; This set of interpretations was called that rabbi’s yoke. So, here we are, the best of the best of the best come to a rabbi, asking to be like that rabbi, and the rabbi has to ask himself “Can this kid do what I do?” “Can this kid be like me” “Do I think this kid is capable of spreading my yoke?” To some of the kids, the rabbi would say “I don’t think you are capable of being my disciple, go to your family, and continue learning your family trade instead”, but to a very select few, the rabbi would tell the student “Come, follow me.” This is what it meant to be a disciple, learning to do what your rabbi does. This was a HUGE honor. So, these boys about 15 years of age would follow around their rabbi from city to city, learning to be like their rabbi. Obviously the streets at this time were all dirt, and as these students would strive to follow closely in the footsteps of their rabbi, dust would be everywhere from the road, and a saying started…”May you be covered in the dust of your rabbi”…meaning that you would be following him well, and learning to do as he did. From there, assuming that the rabbi continued to teach them, they would become rabbis themselves or “teachers” around the age of 30. Back to our initial verse…

So, in the beginning of Mark, we find Jesus (around the age of 30) walking down the water in Galilee. He comes up on Simon and Andrew who were both fisherman. If they were fisherman, we know that they must not have been what? They were not the best of the best. They were not the ones who got called up through the system to get to be disciples of a rabbi. Jesus says “Come, follow me” – what he is really saying here is “I think you can be like me, I think you can do what I do.” No wonder they dropped everything and left. This was a huge honor for them, rather than going up and pursuing a rabbi, the rabbi chose them. This Jesus went out and chose his disciples, those who he knew were capable of bearing his yoke; those who were capable of carrying on his teaching. We see this in John 15:16 (Jesus speaking) “You did not choose me, I chose you and appointed you to bear fruit…” This is a huge thing. The disciples were not the best of the best, but Jesus still says that they can study under him, they can be like him, they can learn to do what he does.

In application, I really like this concept, and the saying that the disciples of the 1st century used. My prayer is that I would follow my rabbi (Jesus) so closely and walk with him so intimately, that people would be able to tell we had spent time together. Not in dust like the disciples of then, but that I would be covered with the scent of Jesus. That through my daily life, people would see him through me: by the way that I conduct myself, and by the way that I love those around me. I pray that you may be covered in the dust of your rabbi.

Where Im At

To be completely honest, I have had a crippling couple weeks. Things have just not gone my way recently. By reading my most recent entries, its clear that things have gone in a direction I wouldn’t have really guessed. Its weird too, because normally things are kind of mellow for me, and I lead a pretty laid back life. And even though I have been pretty bummed about a lot of what’s going on, I’m not mad about it. It happened for a reason, that reason, im still trying to figure out. I honestly believe that a lot of times God will use situations in our lives, as well as circumstances to bring us closer to him. To strip us down, and make us rely on him alone. He’s a jealous God, he doesn’t do well when we start to worship other things. Fortunately hes also loving, and rather than just ditching us for ditching him, he still chases after us, and he is still there for us when we screw things up and have to come back with our head down. I don’t have clarity on all of it yet. Ill be honest. I’m not sure where all of this is going, but I really felt like I needed to take the time, and do some reading and writing tonight to get some things off my chest. I normally have an idea behind where I am going to take each post that I write, and tonight when I started to do that it just didn’t feel right, it felt forced. So I decided I would just start writing and see where things took me. I pray that in this time in my life, where I find myself at the end of my own means, that God would take control, and lead and direct my paths. Revealing to me His desires for my life, and displaying His glorious excellencies through me.

 

I end with a piece of Gold; a few lines from the song “Split-Screen Sadness” by John Mayer. It seems to amazingly capture my mood recently.

 

“Cause I can’t wait to figure out what’s wrong with me

So I can say this is the way that I used to be

There’s no substitute for time”

Leading the Blind

I recently took a flight from Nashville, TN to Charlotte, NC. I was pretty excited since for the first time in a long time I had actually got a good seat…the very first row, with a window so I could sleep. As it got closer to flight time however, I heard my name being called over the loudspeaker. Upon making my way to the gate desk, the airline attendent asked if I would mind switching seats with a blind man in row 3 to make room for his seeing eye dog to sit with him. I didn’t mind, since he had a good looking dog, so I made the switch. Seeing him get on the plane, and take the trip however made me think a lot.

He had absolutely no idea about anything around him. Sure he knew he was sitting down, and things sounded like a plane, but he didn’t know if the aircraft was small, empty, old, or new. He knew that he had to rely on his seeing eye dog, “chief”, and trust that everything else would be ok. Imagine that kind of life…on the same plane I’m checking my bag to make sure I didn’t forget anything, eyeing over other passengers to see if the Micah-Smith-40,000 ft-anti-terror operation needs to go on, all while trying to take a quick nap.

I think this concept related closely to our spiritual lives. Like the blind man, we have to allow ourselves to be led. Imagine if the blind man let go of the dog’s leash and started running away for 20 minutes, would it be fair of him to get mad at the dog for letting him do it?Aren’t we the same way sometimes? We run away from God and his guidance and we get mad at God because he let us do what we wanted. It makes sense that the man folow the dog’s lead as the dog knows how to navigate the man off the plane and to wherever he needs to go safely. How much more does our heavenly father desire to lead us, and know what is harmful and what is pure in our pathways of life. I pray that I would submit to God, and let him lead, rather than sometimes wrestling for control and being upset with the outcome. James 4:8-10 says “Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double minded. Grieve, mourn, and wail. Change your laughter to to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will lift you up”

See the great thing about being under Gods leadership, is that even though we may not always get it right, or we may not always be good at submitting to his will, he is always a prayer away. Draw near to him and he will draw near to you. Admit your mistakes, confess when you have missed the mark. Humbling ourselves before the Lord says “Not my will, but yours oh God”. Be wants us to want him, he wants to lead you, you just have to let him. This all sounds great, but how can I practically be lead by the Lord? Try starting by using a technique called “spiritual breathing”.

1. You “exhale” by confessing your sins immediately to God and asking for his forgiveness.

2. You “inhale” by asking the Holy Spirit to control and empower you, keeping you from returning to sin.

Allow Christ to be your leader. I’ve never hear anyone who has said “I wish I wouldn’t have trusting God on that one”. Let him lead your life, he won’t let you down

Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems

I was recently reading through the first chapter in the book of James. My church recently did a study on James that was really intense, and while I always appreciate hearing a pastor’s perspective on the book, I honestly believe that God can show us even more in its application to our lives by taking time to meditate on his word. James is somewhat of a no-nonsense book where he gets straight to the point, and really doesn’t leave a lot of room for misinterpretation. James 1:2-18 talks about trials and temptation. It starts off by talking about that we should consider it pure joy when we face these trials, because this testing of our faith develops perseverance. Its easy for me to skip over a verse like that for several reasons. 1) Its at the beginning of the chapter, everyone knows all the good stuff comes towards the middle and end after things have been set up. 2) I haven’t been persecuted for my beliefs at all recently, so it seems like I would fall into the “those who experience trails” group. In asking God to reveal himself to me in this section, I find out how wrong I really was.

 

I recently have had lots of “trials” going on in my life, my response to them is where the issue lies. In the past several weeks, I have wrecked my motorcycle, had my work laptop stolen from a TSA Security checkpoint (with all my work, partially un-backed up), and missed a flight at the airport because I was being an idiot and reading rather than paying attention to the loud speaker and time….just to name a few. Not only did God reveal those trials to me as I was reading this, but he also revealed to me my responses, where in lies the real problem.

 

Oddly enough, right after the section on trials in James 1:2-8, verse 9 starts talking about the humble and the rich.

James 1:9-10 “The brother in humble circumstances ought to take pride in his high position. But the one who is rich should take pride in his low position, because he will pass away like the wild flower.”

Its in this section that God begins to speak to me about my response to these trials. Two years ago, as a college student, like most college student, I wasn’t exactly rolling in the money. I had enough money to buy food and what not, but its not like I was exactly able to buy anything I wanted. In that time, I was always reliant on God. When big expenses would come up, or things would go wrong, it was always my very first inclination to turn to God. Maybe that was just saying a quick prayer for help with the situation, or maybe that was trusting God with the entire outcome as it was out of my hands. That was the response of a humble man, in humble circumstances. Now, as a working professional, I have been able to save some money, and actually have something in the bank. (Make no mistake, I am by no means a rich guy according to the bank, but hey, even saving up a couple thousand puts me in better financial straights than when I was in college.) With some money, my response to trials and temptations has also changed. Rather than immediately turning to God when I get in an accident, my response now is to think “well that was stupid, but I have the money to cover it so I should be good”. Rather than immediately turning to God at the loss of my laptop, I just get mad at the TSA, get a hold of the police, and try to take care of it myself by looking through the airport for the guy who snagged it.

 

While some may call it “bad luck” that I have had some trails come up in my life recently, I pray to God that I would be able to look at it as pure joy. I’m not physically hurt from my accident at all, which is incredible; As for my laptop, in recollection, I really only lost about 1-2 files that I wouldn’t be able to access from somewhere else. In all honestly, rather than looking at it as bad luck, I look at it as a father who was calling for the attention of his child, and while it might take some crappy circumstances, and in this case about 2 weeks time, a son who recognizes how far he has come, and a desire to return to intimacy with his God.

 

I pray that my first reaction would always be to turn to God in times of trial and in times of joy.  Out of trials come perseverance, and perseverance must finish its work so that I may become mature and complete in the eyes of God.  

Utility Bills are Silly

Nothing like coming home to a water shut off notice. Not bathing is the new bathing anyway, so it’s just helping me be a trend setter. What can I say, were going green.

A Life Changing Touch

Imagine your entire life being changed by the touch of a man’s cloak. Even still, imagine the desperate straights that you must find yourself in, where you think that the only thing that can really help is this one man. Amazing to me. In the book of Mark, its easy to just casually read over though.  My church has been studying the book of Mark, and today we talked about Mark 5:21-36, and it really spoke to me in unbelievable ways.

 

Basically Jesus comes to this area to teach and is instantly met by a synagogue ruler. The guy basically flat out tells Jesus that he is freaking out because his daughter is dying. Now, this guys JOB is to lead the Jewish synagogue. Jews didn’t exactly embrace this idea that Jesus was the promised one and they didn’t have to follow all these do’s and don’ts anymore, rather they have to submit to him. So for a Jewish leader to basically give in and say “what im doing isn’t working”, that is something in it self. Either way, they start walking to where this sick daughter is, and the text says there are a ton of people crowded around heading toward the home. The focus suddenly switches to this woman though.

 

“25And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. 26She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. 27When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.””

 

This is where things get really crazy to me, this woman had basically given everything she had, to try to figure out why she was bleeding and how to stop it, and notice that rather than getting better, she gets worse. What really struck me here, is that I think so many of us are that woman at times. In this seemingly never ending search for our happiness, and fulfillment, we find ourselves trying anything to make us content. Buying the newest tech gadgets, buying new toys, we tell ourselves “if I just had that _______________ (you fill in the blank) then I would finally be content, I would finally be at a place where I was satisfied”. As we continue to search for whatever that thing is that satisfies us, we find ourselves continuously dissatisfied, and more and more empty. I have come to the conclusion that God set us up. Not in a bad way, but he did.  He gave us this yearning to be satisfied, but left it up to us as to how we choose to satisfy ourselves. Why would he do this? Because he wants us to choose him. He is the only thing that can truly satisfy, and he is the only thing that can fulfill us. In John 4:13-14 Jesus makes this clear when he is talking to the woman at the well. “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst.” What’s great about the woman from Mark 5 is that she can’t be satisfied by the world. She came to a point, where she was at the end of herself and said “If I can just touch is clothes, I will be healed”. When was the last time I chased after Jesus like that. Sure I don’t have any visible bleeding, but when was the last time I looked at my life and honestly said “A lot of this stuff, just isn’t working for me, there has to be something more here” and really dug deeper into my relationship with Jesus?

 

Now obviously I cant touch his physical cloak, or I would have tried that a long time ago, luckily for us, I don’t think that we need to. Looking back at Mark, the touch of the cloak itself is not what healed the woman. In Mark 5:34 Jesus says “your faith has healed you”. It wasn’t just the touch; it was that she believed so whole heartedly that she pushed through a crowd because she knew it would save her. It was her faith. I make it my prayer that I would see Jesus for who he is, and be willing to push through whatever comes between my relationship with him, just to be near him like this woman.

Check one off the Bucket List

Everyone has an opinion on tv shows. Most of the time, you don’t care to hear the opinion, but the opinion viewer is totally willing to give. Take for instance “The Office”…one of my favorite shows (opinion). Often times as the topic of the show randomly comes up in conversation, someone is always sure to talk it down. Giving their opinion of why they think it’s awful (which normally leads to me giving my opinion as to why the person making the statement is awful). The best part about these people giving their opinions is that they don’t matter. “oh you don’t like it? Who cares, your opinion doesn’t count, and your hair sucks” would be a normal reaction from me. Of course they could just say “well your opinion doesn’t matter either, and you have great hair” in which they would only be half right. I do have great hair, but thanks to the Nielson Rating system, my opinion does matter.

I was selected to keep a tv “diary” logging all of the television shows I watch for the week of October 30. This is not the week to just lay around and watch trashy television. No! This is the week to carefully map out the times and channels for all of my favorite shows to ensure that their ratings stay high, and that they stay on the air. It is because of brave citizens like myself who chart out the attack plan for prime time television that we have quality content night after night. Finally a life goal completed: making my opinion count for something. (sounds like i dont need to vote this year after I knock this baby out) So, that being said, the following shows will not appear in my diary, and hopefully consequently be taken off the air:

ER – we get it, life and death sitations every week. John Stamos, I’m sorry, you are still uncle Jesse with scrubs on.

Law and Order- Lame show, I only watch if I can’t fall asleep on my own and I like falling asleep to suspensful music cuts.

CSI:(all) – seriously, I didn’t like it the first time, adding special victims or different locations doesn’t change things for me.

Shows I will be watching over and over:

The Office- enough said.

Re-runs of The OC- some channel has to be playing these. If I can log enough viewing time, maybe Ryan and Seth can be friends again. (that sounded so gay)

To Catch a Predator- It never gets old seeing grown men attempting to solicet teens for sex, and I mean that in the nicest way possible. It’s hilarious seeing these guys get caught and trying to play it off. There is no such thing as a night-time, empty home tutor.