S = Luke 4:24-27 And he said, “Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown. But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land, and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.”
O = After marveling at his words of grace rather than the expected words of judgment from the selected passage in Isaiah, the people are confronted with this inconvenient truth. Jesus sought to deal with their real need--to see all people as children of God, and heirs of the covenant with Abraham. In Nazareth, their nationalistic zeal went too far. Jesus came to bring light, not just to the Jews, but to the gentiles as well!
A = I don't want to be guilty of the same kind of ethno-centric blindness. I remember that after we filmed the video on the cliff above Nazareth, just as the Muslim call to prayer ended, we were disturbed by a woman who cried out in a spirit of judgment, that "at the name of Jesus every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord!" Very true but also very wrong-hearted for when shouted in judgment not in love. I don't want to every get to the place where I can proclaim judgment without tears in my eyes.
P = O Lord, let me be more compassionate than ever before. Let me listen to your word, the Bible, more closely than to my own pet ideas. May your love be evident in my life today.
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