Lent: Journey According To LukeSample

TODAY

DEVOTION
Jesus’ days were seemingly filled with chance encounters and interruptions. People interrupted him as he taught, preached, healed, traveled and tried to rest.

He met people while he was on the way somewhere else or simply passing through a place as in today’s passage, which begins with Jesus ‘passing through’ Jericho. He didn’t have an appointment with Zacchaeus – this was another interruption on his way to Jerusalem to literally save the world. Or was it?

Maybe it wasn’t a chance encounter or an interruption. Maybe it was, as Jesus said, the reason he had come, ‘to seek and to save the lost.’ Saving the world is not an abstract mission, but rather a healing and helping of named individuals whom we meet along the way. Perhaps like Jesus, our life work is often carried out through our daily divine appointments and interruptions. Perhaps all the interruptions are in fact answers to our prayer that God would use us – even us, in his work today.

In our passage, there is a focus on today – ‘I must stay at your house today’, ‘today salvation has come to this house’. What divine appointments or interruptions might God have for you and me today?

FOR REFLECTION
• If we know our life mission – ‘why we have come’ – then it’s easier to discern opportunities to serve, and to not be distracted by the ‘grumbling’ of others or locked into our calendar. In our passage, Jesus describes his mission with, ‘the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost’. In one sentence, what is your life mission?
• When we encounter Jesus, our lives are changed, and also the lives of those around us. Part of our ‘repentance’ or ‘going a different way’ involves making amends with any we might have wronged, as was the case with Zacchaeus. Are there any amends we need to make today?

PRAYER
Lord, bring me someone to serve, today! Amen.