So every Friday this wonderful crazy group of women gets together over at Lisa-Jo Baker’s blog to finger-paint with words. Five minutes of writing–just for the sheer joy of the unedited word. And wonderful things happen. Join the Five Minute Friday Link-up to play along.
Prompt: CROWD
Where Jesus went, crowds followed.
They flocked to hear him teach and pushed against him in the city streets.
They wondered at his miracles and shook their heads when his teachings got to hard.
The same crowd that cheered his arrival into Jerusalem shouted “Crucify” only a few days later.
And still Jesus had compassion on them. He preached hard things to them because he was less concerned with popularity than preaching truth. He let them push up against him in the street, but refused to let them push him to become king–at least the king they wanted him to be. Because Jesus knew what the crowd didn’t–that the path to victory would go through the cross and the only earthly crown he would pierce his brow.
In a world of Twitter followers and Facebook friends it’s easy to play to the crowd. We know what’s going to get us retweeted and liked. We ponder what’s going to make posts go viral. And it gets easy to soften our message. Tone it down. Soft-pedal it.
But we should be less concerned with pleasing the crowd than pleasing the Father. The crowds that surround us are still as lost without a shepherd as the ones that surrounded him. Sometimes compassion requires truth–even when it’s costly.
Jesus loved the crowd too much to give them any less. So should we.
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4 comments
This is beautiful! So inspiring! And it is so easy to get caught up in thinking about what will please people, even all these wonderful online Christian people, and yet – the commission was simply to go and make disciples.
Just, yes.
I love this line: “But we should be less concerned with pleasing the crowd than pleasing the Father.” Such a good reminder to be bold in our faith, through our actions and words.
Ahhhh. . . I love that line “He allowed them to push him in the streets, but not push him to be King.” So. Good. Great thoughts on the writing prompt today. I really enjoyed reading it!
Awesome points this morning. Following Him should be so much more important than following the crowd! I love it. We are studying the book of Mark on Sunday mornings right now and just finished talking about some of this from a different perspective. Appreciating this insight this morning. Thanks,
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