SHADYSIDE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

When your son, our Savior, unmasked the Pharisees by saying they were trying to kill him, there were those in the crowd who said he had demon.  These days, the crowd would claim he was paranoid.  But as the old saying goes, just because we’re paranoid, that doesn’t mean we were wrong about someone trying to get us.  And as it turned out, Jesus was right – the Pharisees were trying to kill him.

There is always someone who is trying to kill our reputation with gossip, or someone who is trying to kill our future in the workplace, or someone who is just trying to kill our spirit.  Sometimes we chalk this up to the competition of the marketplaces, or to the bizarre personal issues of the killer.  In our more rational moments, we tell ourselves that there are not many who are focused on our destruction.  But it only takes one arrow to kill us.  Even if we are neurotic enough to spend our fleeting days making sure everyone is happy with us, what do we do about the threat of cancer or heart disease?

So what do we do about whoever or whatever it is that’s determined to hurt us?  Jesus had no illusion that you would protect him from this.  But he went to the cross with a firm conviction in the resurrection to a new life that nothing and no one can ever take away.

Help me to be more committed to receiving my new eternal life today than to protecting a life that I will inevitably lose anyway.  Amen.