Mark 1:35-45.
Jesus had healed Peter’s mother in law and driven out many demons from people. Today he gets up before sunrise to go pray and his disciples come looking for him on behalf of others but he says he needs to go preach in other villages. He heals a man of leprosy and warns him to follow the rules of purification but not tell anyone about his healing. The man tells everyone, the news spread and Jesus can’t go into towns anymore but has to stay outside due to the crowds seeking him.
Do you follow the rules?
Do you chase God away by looking for blessings?
I think God made me a principal so I could learn to follow rules.
For most of my life I have chafed at rules.
I chafed because they got in the way of what I wanted to do.
I still have a hard time obeying the rules of the road when I drive my car.
I always take small liberties with them.
And even as a pedestrian, I want to break the rules for selfish purposes.
But someone always sees.
#65279;
Around my school I’m especially careful to obey all traffic and pedestrian rules and pick up bits of trash because I know a student somewhere is watching me and I must be more obedient to the rules than anyone else.
I must be perfectly obedient in order to discipline my students who break the rules.
As principal, I inherited much of what was done at my school before me.
I didn’t want that inheritance, I didn’t want to complete plans that were not mine.
I wanted to sweep everything away and build anew.
I did not want the long, hard road of renovation instead of the relatively easier road of new construction.
#65279;
So that’s what I mostly did and transformed a great deal of the school in the process and set us on a new course.
But, and it’s a big but, I had to attend to outdated plans because outsiders were judging the school on those, on the old, not the new. I am like the man healed of leprosy.
#65279; My whoops of joy at the new are not enough.
I must attend to the old rules and be obedient.
#65279;
This has been a huge lesson for me, one that I have been dodging for years.
God has graciously given me a lot of stress over this, and unnecessary suffering has resulted because of my arrogant insistence on my own way.
I am not bigger than the rules.
That was what Jesus wanted to tell the man healed of leprosy.
That’s what he’s telling me today.
Application: get my school office personnel refocuse to help me obey some old rules.
#65279;
Lord, let me not force you out into the wilderness of my life because I want to dwell in the city of my own building.
