Sleepless

Two weeks ago on Monday night I could not go to sleep. I finally ended up getting up after about three hours of fitful sleep. I remember because I could not shut down.  On Monday evening I am usually outside with my dog Murphy and my computer and my Bible getting ready for the Bible study I lead on Tuesday mornings. Its a small group of men, six of us. We've been meeting for about seven years.

We are currently looking at the gospels, attempting to look at them all at once. I use a parallel website that puts the recorded events together so it is easier to look at the four gospels as a whole. Two weeks ago we started looking at the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, chapters 5, 6 & 7. I'd spent that evening looking at the opening, the "blessed are's" that begin this magnificent discourse. I wrote out some thoughts about the different blesseds that are listed and found myself so caught up that I simply could not shut down when I went to bed.

I fear I will once again be unable to shut down tonight. Maybe writing here will help me, but I doubt it.

I keep thinking about the response recorded at the end of the discourse, the people were amazed at Jesus' teaching and His authority.  I am putting myself in that place, sitting there and trying to "listen" as if I'd never heard these words before. Tonight I am caught up in His telling those gathered that we are salt and light.  He tells us this right after turning their world upside down by telling them what is really important in the Kingdom of God - the opening "blesseds".  They really did turn things upside down for those listening that day and still do when we lay alongside what He tells us is important in the Kingdom side by side to our own culture of what is important for success.

So now those hearing, both then and now, are salt and light. Wow! Not the theologically learned, not the professors in hallowed halls of learning, not those out doing the extraordinary, but the poor in spirit, those that mourn, those that are meek, those that hunger and thirst for righteousness, those that forgive, those that are peacemakers. It boggles my mind.

He then goes on to say He came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it. Then he gives example after example of ways we think we keep and obey the law only to hear how being angry at a brother is the equivalent of murder, that lust is adultery. The rest of the passage pins us to the wall with the choice of perfection or humble submission to what is to come, namely His righteousness indwelling me via the Holy Spirit given at second birth.

He completely turns their world, and our religious world upside down, if we but listen carefully.

Tonight, I am once again captured by Him, His clarity and mystery alongside His authority.  Man, I just want to follow this guy. He's really something.  I do fear though, that I will have a hard time shutting down to sleep.