January 12, 2010
Out on a Limb
During the winter the neighborhood cat can easily spot doves sitting on the limbs of our leafless trees. I recently watched him climb up on a limb and the closer he got to the doves the more bold he seemed to become. His focus never wandered from the birds, yet their feathers remained unruffled as they sat on their perch and watched him creep closer and closer. The birds were in striking range, but there was one problem, they were about a foot and a half above the cat. It seems the cat had taken the wrong fork and he and the birds weren’t even on the same branch. Should believers keep their eye on the prize? Absolutely…but we also need to make sure we’re on the right road.
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Gail;
-----One would be tempted to think this cat was not very bright. Towards the end of our Sunday School class last Sunday the leader threw out for discussion, “Is the question, ‘What would Jesus do?’ really a valid question?” A member of the class interjected, “I think the real question is, ‘What is Jesus doing?’” It is unfortunate the topic came so late, because both angles of that common query are so analogous to this poor cat’s arrival upon the wrong limb.
-----Your certainty about keeping our eyes on the prize is very Colossians 3. But so also is that which the cat failed to do. If we think the entire prize is the glory of the New Jerusalem, the perfect peace of eternal life with Jesus hereafter, and the inerrancy of all we will then think and do, we will find ourselves currently confused and out on some strange limb. For what we will gain at the finish line is only part of our prize. We are given the Holy Spirit now as a down payment of that prize. So what we now gain through the Spirit is also part it. Analogously, the cat failed to keep an eye on this part of the prize.
-----Before the cat came to the fork in the branch, he was on the right limb. Faced with the decision of which tine to take, would his attending the question, “What would Jesus do?” or even the other, “What is Jesus doing?” have helped him choose? I offer that the cat is not Jesus, nor was the cat’s circumstance any circumstance Jesus faced. Since Jesus’ life was lived for a definite purpose, He had to choose forks that specifically led to it. This cat is not moving through the branches of the tree to be crucified for the sins of mankind and raise himself from the dead as Lord and Savior. Rather, he is simply, in cat ways, going to the grocery store. Being like Jesus is part of our current prize, which is the rest of Colossians 3, but it is not being Him. We must live our lives toward their present purposes as well as toward their eternal purposes. So trying to imagine what Jesus would do overly focuses on our ultimate prize as much as the poor cat did on the doves.
-----It is unfortunate the more appropriate question does not fit a bumper-sticker, “How did Jesus discern the right choice from multiple options?” He had to do that with scrutinizing care because the purpose of His life was so specific. As are ours - I am a CPA, you are a council-person. So we must also scrutinize according to the specific purposes of our lives, attending carefully to the circumstances at hand. Not that they will be right or wrong for anyone, but that they may be right or wrong for you or me. That is the other part of the prize - Jesus here in my life within my circumstances. The rest of Colossians 3 may demand my options morally. But if all are moral, I abide, and the purposes of only my individual life are left at play. For sooner or later, the cat must arrive at the grocery store.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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