Smallest Seed

Here's Part 1 Imagine that poor guy in Mark 3 suffering from a shriveled hand a long time even if he went to the worship place (probably a long-time member of it) where God, the Healer, was supposed to be worshiped. All religion and no power. The "spiritual" high-ranking Pharisees were even there. I remember churches where pastors have titles and degrees, adept at their human theologies, and yet the sick there remain to be sick. [Image above by Kendal, Unsplash]. But Jesus did a spectacular miracle. You know what a shriveled hand is? "Shriveled" means wrinkled and contracted, says Google. It's atrophy and drying of a limb due to sickness, like extreme thinning of the hand and arm, and kindof twisted. See image below. The man in Mark 3 was suffering something like that. I imagine it to be severe, because the miracle created a sensation (besides being done on a Sabbath), so much so that the authorities wanted Jesus killed. Picture borrowed from thi...

What caught my critical eye at once was the man with a shriveled hand in the synagogue in Mark 3. What was he doing there remaining unhealed? There were Pharisees around with the Herodians, so why didn't they pray for healing? Surely, their religious expertise have made them read about miracles and healing in the Old Testament done by God. But why did this man go on suffering from a shriveled hand? Why was there no miracle in the synagogue? [Picture above from Natanael Melchor, Unsplash]. What kind of synagogue was that? The members claimed to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob but that man's hand remained shriveled--until Jesus came. Church is like that today. They worship Jesus, the Healer, but their very members remain sick and suffering from ailments. Even their pastors have maintenance medicines. Some even die of diseases or rushed to the ICU for serious medical attention. They know Jesus only as Savior. Jesus is a lot more than that. He is our Portion. Whe...

In a way, Resurrection's good news is also about the grace that enables us to stop drinking from the cup of God's wrath, and having the enemy drink from it instead. By Jesus' rising from death through God's supernatural power, true believers become children of God spared from his wrath and given supernatural power to live his life on earth and do his ministry. [Picture above by Damir Spanic, Unsplash]. “See, I have taken out of your hand the cup that made you stagger; from that cup, the goblet of my wrath, you will never drink again. 23 I will put it into the hands of your tormentors, who said to you, ‘Fall prostrate that we may walk on you.’ And you made your back like the ground, like a street to be walked on.” [Isaiah 51.22-23] But it doesn't end there. To a lot of church people, though, it does--escaping the wrath is the end--and all they have to do now is be active in  their church and in their ministries happily ever after. This is what they call church...