EfM Reflections

So below is a copy of something I wrote in response to Parallel Guide 19 in EfM year one. I may be totally out of it, but this is what I thought of. Let me know what you think.

Year One read about Judges. We read about how the people of Isreal entered into a cycle. During a time when a judge was in place, they followed God's commandments. When the judge was no longer around the people would fall and return to worshipping the Baals. This led the reading to discuss the fourfold pattern: sin > punishment > repentance > deliverance and the back to sin again. It was this pattern that was on my mind while watching the Rob Bell video "Dust".

In the video Bell discusses what a disciple is. He talks about the schooling that children at the time of Jesus could have done. The first - until about the age of ten - focused the children on the Torah, and more specifically memorizing it. By the end of that, most students had gone on to learn their family trade. For the best of the best they moved on to the next step and memorized the rest of Hebrew Scriptures. By the end of that most children had moved on to their family trade. This was at about 15 years of age. But, the best of the best of the best applied to be disciples of a rabbi. The rabbi would test the kid, really grill them to see if they knew their stuff. More often than not the rabbi would tell the student to continue learning their family trade. But, if the rabbi thought the kid had really got it, the kid would leave everything and follow the rabbi. They would learn to do what the rabbi does - to become like the rabbi.

James and John, disciples of Jesus, were fishing when Jesus called them. That meant that they weren't the best of the best. They were the B-team, the JV. Jesus doesn't call the best of the best, Jesus calls all of us, the B-team, the JV, the anybodies. What made the people of Israel so special? Could they have been just another group of people? A group of anybodies? The B-Team?

A continuing theme in year one has been that God calls us through no big achievement of our own. From that it shows that God believes in us. I think that is part of the reason He doesn't give up on us. Why that fourfold pattern keeps continuing.

The other point I got out of Rob Bell video comes out of the Story of jesus walking on the water. Jesus is walking on the water and calls Peter to come to Him. Peter tkes one or two steps and sinks. Jesus saves him and says, "You of little faith. But who did Peter not have faith in? Jesus wasn't sinking. Peter didn't have faith in himself.

Maybe that was part of Israel's problem. They didn't have enough faith in themselves to continue on without their judge.

I wonder how are like the people of Israel. It seems to me that when things are going well, and when we have good leadership we have faith in ourselves - we continue in the work God calls us to. But, when things get hard, when we loose our leaders how easy is it to give up, to loose faith, and stop - or step back - in the ministry we are called to.