Seeking Jesus in Wise and Unfamiliar Ways

Phillip Yancey has an interesting perspective on seagulls. (From “The Strong Willed Child” by James Dobson)

'It's easy to see why people like the seagull. He exults in freedom. He thrusts his wings backward with powerful strokes, climbing higher and higher until he's above all the other gulls, then coasts downward in majestic loops and circles. He constantly performs, as if he knows a movie camera is trained on him, recording.

In a flock, though, the seagull is a different bird. His majesty and dignity melt into a sordid slough of in-fighting and cruelty. Watch that same gull as he dive-bombs into a group of gulls, provoking a flurry of scattered feathers and angry squawks to steal a tiny morsel of meat. The concepts of sharing and manners do not exist among gulls. They are so fiercely competitive and jealous that if you tie a red ribbon around the leg of one gull, making him stand out, you sentence him to execution. The others in the flock will furiously attack him with claws and beaks, hammering through feathers and flesh to draw blood. They'll continue until he lies flattened in a bloody heap.”

People can be like seagulls sometimes.We may admire a person for his or her individual performances but then become disappointed to learn they are less than admirable personally. Interacting with people can be a challenge, especially if there is something unfamiliar or strange about them. We just don't like to deal with the strange and unfamiliar. However, if God is going to do something new in our lives this year, we will need to accept and even embrace unfamiliar and strange new experiences.
     Matthew 2:1-12 tells the story of the Magi (Wisemen), strangers from the East who came after Jesus’ birth to pay him homage. These were strange, unfamiliar people who were seeking Christ in familiar ways.
God was seeking to reveal Christ to all the people of the world, including unfamiliar people in the Gentile world like the Magi. Unfamiliar people require us to make adjustments. Consider the faith and courage adjustments required for the unfamiliar Magi to enter into a Jewish home and worship a child Jewish. Consider the humility adjustments required for Saul to embrace Jesus' message on the road to Damascus, and consider the love adjustments required for Jesus to leave his heavenly home and dwell among us and then die for our sins.
     Tony Campolo tells a true story of a Jewish boy who suffered under the Nazis in World War II. He was living in a small Polish village when he and all the other Jews of the vicinity were rounded up by Nazi SS troops and sentenced to death. This boy joined his neighbors in digging a shallow ditch for their graves, then faced the firing squad with his parents.

Sprayed with machine-gun fire, bodies fell into the ditch and the Nazis covered the crumpled bodies with dirt. But none of the bullets hit the little boy. He was splattered with the blood of his parents and when they fell into the ditch, he pretended to be dead and fell on top of them. The grave was so shallow that the thin covering of dirt did not prevent air from getting through to him so that he could breathe.

Several hours later, when darkness fell, he clawed his way out of the grave. With blood and dirt caked to his little body, he made his way to the nearest house and begged for help. Recognizing him as one of the Jewish boys marked for death, he was turned away at house after house as people feared getting into trouble with the SS troops. Then something inside seemed to guide him to say something that was very strange for a Jewish boy to say. When the next family responded to his timid knocking in the still of the night, they heard him cry, "Don't you recognize me? I am the Jesus you say you love."

After a poignant pause, the woman who stood in the doorway swept him into her arms and kissed him. From that day on, the members of that family cared for that boy as though he was one of their own.
If God is going to do something new in our lives this year, we will need to accept and even embrace unfamiliar and strange new experiences too.