September 17

The Highest Hurdle


It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.

Mark 2:17 (NIV)


Then Jesus began to open their minds so they could understand the Scriptures.

Luke 24:45 (NCV)


Are you content? Comfortable in life? Satisfied with things just the way they are? Do you think you’re a pretty good person, doing just fine and perhaps … better than most? If so, watch out!

There’s a little bit of Pharisee in each of us and unless this persona is subdued and conquered we will miss out. We will miss out on the most important thing in life: truly knowing and understanding more of God.

I picture Jesus in this shadowy room of human warmth and workaday smells with His wonderful group of misfits and outcasts—people who had ridden the roller coasters of emotion and self—the not-quite-good-enoughs who had witnessed His power and glory, but also their own great despair and now this new humility. They would surrender all for Christ and here they stood slack-jawed, opened, and now they caught the complete vision as Christ filled them with His knowledge.

They got it; and when they got it—visions of God’s grace and plan—everything became new. Gone were the glum faces and despairing attitudes. “They worshipped him and returned … very happy. They stayed … praising God” (Luke 24:52-53).

Understanding our shortcomings is the gateway to real knowledge, real life. Too many of us I’m afraid face the highest hurdle: our own self-righteousness.


Father, forgive us for thinking we are so “healthy” when truly our needs are so great. Amen.