I’m currently reading a history book about William Marshall, considered by the author to be one of England’s greatest knights. He served under five different kings in his lifetime and fought in a multitude of battles and tournaments. During the reign of Richard the Lionheart, Richard was being held for ransom in Germany, being captured on his way home from the Crusades. Richard’s brother, Count John, had taken bold steps to usurp the kingdom for himself in Richard’s absence.
William Marshall was a man of the battlefield, but commissioned with representing Richard’s interests back in England. The subtleties and subterfuges of court were challenging for him and he spent a lot of his time trying to defuse tensions between himself and Count John. There came a time, however, when John crossed lines that William couldn’t accept and he had to identify himself as allied with Richard. He faced severe consequences as a result and found himself losing lands and titles and being pressed to the brink of civil war… until Richard finally returned and set the whole kingdom right.
That account made me think about the passage we’ll be reading in Matthew 10 this Sunday. Jesus continues to give instruction to the disciples he sends out, and this week he’ll be giving some grave warnings. It will not, unfortunately, be a happy, bouncy message.
Why do you think it’s necessary to be both shrewd and innocent (harmless)? What are the dangers of either of these in isolation?
When Jesus says he came to bring a sword, not peace, how do you reconcile that with his title as “Prince of Peace”? Where does the conflict describe originate from; who is the aggressor?
What do you fear losing most in this life? How can Jesus’ words about the sparrow ease your fears?
How would you describe the cost of identification with Christ? What challenges your commitment to Christ and the kingdom of God the most? How can we learn from these instructions so as to increase our commitment to the mission?
This will be a challenging study – hope to see you this Sunday!
What are your first thoughts when you read the letters IRS together? Do you have negative or positive feelings about this agency? That’s sort of a rhetorical question, I don’t know many people who get the warm and fuzzies when it comes to our government tax agency. As John Oliver says, “It’s no wonder people hate the IRS. They’re unavoidable, they often function poorly and they combine things we hate the most: losing money and math.”
How easy is it for you to trust someone? We may consider ourselves to be “trusting souls”, but the reality is we often find it difficult to place our trust in someone else. A lot of factors go into that – past experiences, our own sense of frailty when it comes to trustworthiness, and a host of other reasons go into our tentative approach to giving away our trust. It’s hard to trust others…and those are people we can SEE and examine and evaluate on a regular basis. What about a God who hides himself (
“I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.” ~ C.S. Lewis
Do you remember playing “opposite day” when you were a kid? It could be sort of fun at first, but it always devolved into an annoying game of contradictions. There would usually be one kid who would take it too far and drive everyone around him to the brink of violence. I really should apologize for that.
I remember once when my wife and I were going to turn an enclosed porch area on the back of our house into an extra bedroom for our boys. We planned and considered how this could be accomplished and what it would take. We drew a lot of diagrams on napkins and contemplated this task – and then realized it was too big for us and had to be hired out. A friend from church did construction jobs like this agreed to take on our project. What I still remember was the great sense of satisfaction and even surprise when he set out to tear sections out and rebuild others, because there was a big difference between this project in theory and seeing it in action. It turned out much better than we had imagined.
If you’ve ever dieted, either to shed a few pounds or because of health reasons, what is the main thing you think about whilst denying yourself of some type of food? I can’t speak for you, but I know that most of the time all I see are visions of corn-dogs dancing in a chorus line singing “We taste great with MUSTARD!”. That’s a fascinating thing about the human experience: we have strong urges and desires for whatever it is that is that is generally not good for us.
It looks like our current hurricane season is going to be a tad more active than in the last 10 years. We’re already getting advisories about having our emergency supplies and evacuation procedures in place. There are a lot of things that take us by surprise in life, but hurricanes are not usually one of them. We have as much as a week to prepare in many cases. Meterologists give us the heads up; “Storm’s a comin’!” and it’s up to us whether we heed that forecast or not.
WONDERWHAT 