Do you know what makes me sad about John 7? Many disciples deserted Jesus during this time. Deserted Jesus. Seriously!! They were like "Dude...what you are teaching is too hard for us." TOO HARD?!? You've seen miraculous things. You've watched this Man of God WALK ON WATER and yet...what he was telling you was TOO HARD?!? They were right there. They could see Him. Touch Him. Feel Him and they choose to walk away.
Yet...they stayed. 12 of them. Jesus choose them. He called them out. He called them by name. He asked them "You do not want to leave too, do you?" And Simon Peter says (AND don't we know HIS story!) "Lord,to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know you are the Holy One of God." Go Peter Go!!
Today is the day we lost my sister in law to cancer 12 years ago. I got on the treadmill and ran/walked 4 miles in her honor. I have a cross-stitched picture I had made for my grandmother in 1994 hanging there. My grandmother passed away unexpectedly 8 years ago in January as well. The picture is to remind me to keep on persevering in spite of it all. On Saturday, I ran/walked 7 miles and noticed cobwebs. I cleaned them off. Today, cobwebs where back. As I was running, I kept thinking "Why would that spider choose to create a web again?" A living creature leaving behind a dead reminder of it's presence. I was just going to clean it away. Why would it do it? Will it build it again? Leave another dead reminder of it's presence yet again. I got thinking. Is that what we do with our lives? Do we constantly leave dead reminders of our presence in people's lives that are so offensive to them that all they want to do is wipe them away? "Sorry Kristina, what you are doing is TOO HARD!! I can't stay in your life...I have to cut you off! I can't be your sponsor any more. I can't acknowledge your Facebook statuses. I have to either 'hide' or 'delete' you because you are so offensive to me." Am I that to those people? Am I the spider or am I being Jesus to them? You can be around me. Touch me. Feel me. Who am I being? The spider or Jesus in people lives? Are you wiping me away because I am offensive or just TOO HARD?
I have to laugh because this kind of goes along with yesterday's blog. "Well, if I 'like' her stuff, she might take it the wrong way and become 'too full of herself.' " Where is the humility in that? Once again...the spider or Jesus-hearted woman? The spider only builds her web for the benefit of herself. To catch food. To lay her eggs. To become mobile. It is self serving. It becomes a trap for all who are around that web.
So yes...today...today...doubt has overcome. I choose the hard path. I choose to stay with Jesus. I choose to stay with Him even if that means that others will walk away because it is "too hard". Sure, I'll make mistakes. I might go overboard. I might become too radical. Too zealous. But in the end, your opinion doesn't matter. Like me or wipe me away. I will always survive because I have become a true Jesus-hearted woman. I know that and that is where I will always be second.
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