Day 222 - Stuck in Neutral
📖Daily Reading
Luke 9-10
Join me on my morning walk as we rise and shine together by walking through the Bible daily and learn a practical applicable coaching nuggets from the ultimate life coach - our creator (whatever that means to you). No judgement zone here, all are welcome, we are all on a spiritual journey because we are after all spiritual beings having a human experience.
📝 Reflection
Luke 9: 62
Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”
There is not a lot of neutrality in chapters 9 and 10 of Luke. Following Jesus, like truly following Jesus and trying to live by love requires driving a stake in the ground. So if you feel like you are stuck in neutral, like I often do, reading the Bible will help give you clarity! In chapter 9 v 50, Jesus says “Do not stop him, for the one who is not against you is for you.” Isn’t this the opposite from the way we think as humans? What if we all went around assuming that others are for us unless they directly go against us? Kids do this don’t they? He gives the reminder again in these chapters to be childlike. This is another way we can show up childlike in our attitude toward life and love.
In the verse above, Jesus is speaking to a couple of people who have volunteered to follow him. The response is ‘yes, but first let me bury’ my father and ‘yes, but first let me say goodbye to my family’. This seems reasonable right? But Jesus knows how the human mind and heart work, if they have this attitude and they go and do the ‘but first’s’ they are not fully committed and will likely return to their homes and get stuck in neutral. While these may be literal examples, we need to read this in context and understand what the spirit behind it is. As we were instructed in Luke 8, be careful how you hear. If we are saying we are committed to something and simultaneously saying ‘but first…’, are we actually committed or is it just a want or desire?
In another example in chapter 10 vs.25-29 Jesus is speaking and gets a question from a religious legal expert “Teacher, what should I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus responds and asks him “What does the law of Moses say?” The expert responds with “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind. And, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” Jesus agrees that is correct. Then the expert asks ‘who is my neighbor’ because he wanted to justify his actions. So Jesus responds with the very well known story about the Good Samaritan. The despised Samaritan is the neighbor because he chooses to have compassion upon the wounded Jewish man by the side of the road. The first two men who encountered the wounded man, a priest and a levite pass him by without helping and are an example to us all of how not be behave, we are not called to be neutral in the face of suffering. From the just knowing ‘who’ these characters in the story we would have assumed that the Jewish priest and Levite would have considered themselves a neighbor to their fellow Jew who was injured and that the known enemy of the Jews a Samaritan would have been the one to pass by - looks can be deceiving. Love and one’s true heart are shown by deeds not by words or by titles or masks we wear.
So much to unpack in these two chapters, I could go on and on, but I will end with the story of Mary and Martha which can be found at the end of chapter 10. A woman named Martha hosts Jesus at her home as he was traveling through their town. Martha has a sister named Mary who sat at Jesus’s feet while he was visiting just listening to everything he was teaching. Martha was distracted and busy preparing the meal and started getting frustrated with Mary and came to Jesus to have him ask Mary to help her, because she was doing all the work and it wasn’t fair. Jesus gently said to her “My dear Martha, you are worried and upset over all these details! There is only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it, and it will not be taken away from her.” Martha was stuck in the details and busyness and missing the most important thing, Jesus-love personified, was in her home.
We can get so caught up in our day to day responsibilities and doing ‘life’ that we don’t even realize we are stuck in ruts and in neutral. Life is precious, love is the life blood 🩸❤️that gets us out of neutral. Relationships and caring for each other are ways love can be expressed, it needs to be expressed or we start stagnating and getting focused on things that at the end of the day are not the most important. Without a regular check in with ourselves, we drift off course and we might not even notice. Think of a car in neutral, it can be pushed, pulled and guided along by outside forces. We aren’t much different. We have to be intentional and spiritually checked in and fed by Love daily, so we know what it really ‘tastes’ like otherwise we can be easily fooled by fake versions.
Love is not neutral and it doesn’t sit idly by. My favorite question to ask myself lately is “What would Love do/say here?” If I can catch myself in time before I act or speak. If I don’t, which is more often, then I can still ask myself this question and back track in humility and repair. So it is never too late to Love, Love is always right on time, in fact it may even have a bigger impact when it requires you to humbly back track…
✍🏼Daily Journal Prompt
Are you stuck in neutral? Have you drifted off course? How can you use the question 'what would love do/say here? Do you have a situation that comes to mind?
📖Tomorrows Reading
Luke 11
dCoaching Opportunity
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