With honesty and hope, Claire
The Gospels are full of one-on-one moments, Jesus stopping for a single person when crowds are pressing. A conversation at a well. A hand reaching through a crowd. A question asked on a beach at dawn. These aren't just stories about what Jesus did. They're mirrors.
Every person He encountered came with something. A wound. An agenda. A question they couldn't quite ask out loud. A desperate, reaching faith. A proud, defended heart. And Jesus, every time, responded to what was actually there, not to the surface version of it.
This series asks you to step into each encounter, not as an observer, but as someone who might be standing in the same place. What does this reveal about Jesus? And, more uncomfortably, what does it reveal about you?
Mercy, inclusion, and what it means to be truly seen by the One who sees everything.
She came to avoid people. He came to find her. That's the first thing to notice.
She had five husbands, and the one she was with wasn't hers: her whole story was written in rejection and shame. She was drawing water alone at noon because the other women wouldn't have her. And Jesus didn't start with any of that. He started with thirst. His, and hers.
He asked her for water. He, the One who made water, who walked on it, who would one day turn it into something that never runs out, asked her for a drink. And in that small moment of needing something from her, He opened a door she hadn't expected. He saw her. Not her history. Her.
By the end of the conversation, she's left her water jar, the whole reason she came, and run back to tell a town full of people who rejected her about the Man who told her everything she ever did. Shame, when it meets genuine love, doesn't stay shame. It becomes testimony.
Where am I still going back to wells that don't satisfy? What am I carrying to draw water that I've been carrying for years, and what would it mean to leave it at His feet?
Jesus, You see my whole story: the parts I've hidden, the parts I'm ashamed of, the patterns I keep coming back to. I don't want to keep returning to the wrong wells. Meet me here, at this one, and give me the water that actually lasts.
He didn't ask to be found. He only wanted to see from a safe distance, far enough away that he didn't have to respond. And Jesus walked past every objection the crowd had, past every reason not to, looked up into that tree, and said: come down. I'm coming to your house today.
The crowd muttered. Of course they did. He's a sinner. Not a respectable sinner: the worst kind. The kind who got rich by stealing from his own people with Rome's permission. And Jesus chose his house out of every house in Jericho.
There's something about being genuinely chosen, not tolerated, not endured, but specifically wanted, that changes a person. Zacchaeus came down immediately. And before dinner was over, he was giving away half of everything he owned. Nobody told him to. Jesus didn't issue a command. He just came close. And that was enough.
What would change in me if I really believed Jesus wants to come to my house, not when I've cleaned up, not when I've sorted myself out, but today, as things actually are?
Lord, I sometimes keep You at a safe distance, close enough to observe, far enough that I don't have to respond. Come closer anyway. Choose my house. I'll come down from whatever I've been hiding in to see You.
She didn't come with words. She came with everything she had, tears, hair, perfume, her whole broken, uninvited self. She didn't ask permission. She just came.
The Pharisee saw a sinner disrupting his dinner party. Jesus saw someone who understood something the host had completely missed. He told a story: two people owed a debt they couldn't pay. One owed more. Both were forgiven. Who loves more? The one forgiven more. Of course.
Then He turned it around. Simon, the respectable host, had offered Jesus none of the basic courtesies of hospitality. No water for His feet. No greeting kiss. No oil for His head. This woman had given Him everything. Not because she had more to offer, but because she knew how much she'd been forgiven.
There's a version of Christianity that's tidy and managed and never embarrassing. And there's this. She chose this. Jesus defended her.
Do I love Jesus like someone who's been forgiven much, extravagantly, without caring what anyone thinks, or do I treat grace like something I quietly qualified for?
Forgive me for treating Your mercy like something ordinary, something I earned by being a reasonably good person. I have been forgiven much. I want to love like it. Even if it looks excessive. Even if it's embarrassing.
This encounter is uncomfortable if we let it be. Jesus seems to turn her away with a hard word. Every comfortable reading of Jesus runs into this passage eventually.
But look at what she does. She doesn't argue. She doesn't correct Him or appeal to fairness. She agrees, yes, Lord, even so, and presses forward anyway. Her faith isn't in her right to ask. It's entirely in His ability to give. Even crumbs from His table are more than anything else on offer.
And Jesus marvelled. That word appears only twice in the Gospels, once here, once at the Roman centurion. Both Gentiles. Both people who had no claim on Him. Both people whose faith was not in their position but in His sufficiency.
She got what she came for. And she went home. Faith like this, that agrees with the hard thing and keeps asking anyway, is rarer than we think. And it works.
Have I ever given up on a prayer because I felt unworthy to ask? What would it look like to persist the way she did, not because I have a right to, but because He is more than able?
Lord, I don't always feel worthy to ask. There are prayers I've stopped praying because I felt disqualified. But I'm asking. Even crumbs from You are more than enough for everything I'm carrying.
Jesus was astonished. The Greek word is thaumázō, genuine, full-stop amazement. The man who had every reason to be proud, every reason to demand a personal visit, said simply: say the word. He understood what authority actually was because he lived under it and exercised it every day.
He said something striking: I am not worthy for You to come under my roof. A Roman military officer, one of the most powerful men in that city, who didn't have to bow to anyone, chose to bow. That's not weakness. That's wisdom. He saw Jesus clearly enough to know what he was looking at.
Jesus said He hadn't found faith like this in all of Israel. Not in the synagogues, not in the religious leaders, not in His own disciples. In a Roman soldier who just wanted his servant healed and understood, somehow, that the word of Jesus was sufficient for it.
Faith sometimes looks less like feeling and more like this: a clear-eyed recognition of who Jesus actually is, and a willingness to act on it.
Do I truly believe the word of Jesus is enough, or do I need signs, feelings, and circumstances to shift before I'll trust what He's already said?
Lord, I am not worthy for You to come. But say the word. Say it over the thing I've been circling and worrying and waiting about. Your word is enough. Let me live like that is actually true.
Ten received the miracle. One received the relationship. That's a ratio worth sitting with.
Jesus asked where the other nine were, and the question sounds almost like grief. Not anger. He healed them knowing most would walk away. He asked the question anyway. Because it matters. Gratitude is not the natural human response to grace. It has to be chosen.
The one who came back was a Samaritan, doubly outside. Twice excluded. And he came back throwing himself at Jesus' feet, face down. He'd been cleansed of the disease. But Jesus said something different to him: your faith has made you well. A different Greek word, sōzō. Saved. Whole. The other nine got the healing. He got something deeper.
This is one of those passages I can't read without asking myself how many times I've received from God and kept walking, helped, answered, carried through, without stopping to turn back and say thank You.
How often do I receive from God and keep going, healed, helped, answered, without stopping to come back? What is the unanswered prayer that got answered, the crisis that passed, the thing He did that I've already moved past?
Forgive me for receiving Your gifts and moving on without stopping. Today I come back. For the thing You healed. For the prayer You answered before I even asked properly. For every mercy I walked through without turning around. Thank You.
He didn't ask if he qualified. He didn't clean himself up first. He just got up and left the booth, the income, the security, the identity he'd built around survival, and went.
There is no record of a conversation before this moment. No indication that Matthew had been following Jesus from a distance, working up the courage. Jesus walked past. Two words. Matthew stood up. That's the whole story of his call.
And then: the first thing he did with his new life was share it. He threw a banquet and invited every sinner and tax collector he knew. The Pharisees were scandalized. Jesus said: it's not the healthy who need a doctor. I didn't come for the people who think they're fine.
Matthew's story starts with a leaving and immediately becomes an invitation. He didn't need to understand everything about where he was going before he went. He just needed to leave what he was sitting behind.
Is there an identity, a habit, a way of surviving that I'm still sitting behind instead of leaving? And who would I invite to the table if I followed more completely?
Lord, I want to get up and follow. Show me what I'm still sitting behind, what I go back to out of habit or fear or need for security. And when I leave it, show me who to invite.
Discipleship, cost, and the uncomfortable distance between saying we'll follow and actually following.
Jesus looked at him and loved him, before the hard word, not after. That's the detail I can't get past. This is not a cold verdict. It's a diagnosis delivered with love, which is the only way a true diagnosis can be delivered.
The young man was genuinely good. He wasn't lying about the commandments. He had done everything right. And the thing blocking the door wasn't sin in the obvious sense: it was wealth. His identity. His security. The one thing he could point to as evidence that he was okay.
He asked what he must do. Jesus told him. He couldn't do it. And he walked away sad, which is the saddest detail in the story, because it means he understood exactly what he was choosing. He knew. And he still couldn't let go.
Whatever we cannot give up owns us. Whatever we are not willing to surrender becomes the thing that stands between us and the life we say we want.
If Jesus looked at me with love and said "one thing you lack", what would He point to? What is the thing I'd walk away from rather than surrender?
Lord, show me my one thing. The thing I hold so tightly I've stopped noticing I'm holding it. I want to hold everything loosely, even what I've worked hard for, even what feels like security. I don't want to walk away sad.
He got out of the boat. That is not nothing. Eleven other disciples stayed in it. Whatever we think of what happened next, Peter is the only one in history besides Jesus who has ever walked on water. Because he was the only one who got out.
He walked toward Jesus. And then he looked at the storm, at the very real, very violent, very terrifying storm, and the math changed. He was still in the same place. Jesus was still in the same place. But his eyes had moved, and the rest of him followed.
Jesus reached out immediately and caught him. Immediately, before he went under. And then He asked the question: Why did you doubt? Not as a condemnation. More like: Peter, you were doing it. What happened? It's a question worth asking ourselves. Not cruelly. Honestly. Because it matters where our eyes are.
Where am I sinking right now because I've stopped looking at Jesus and started looking at the size of the storm? What would it take to fix my eyes back on Him?
Lord, save me. I took my eyes off You and now I'm going under. Reach out immediately. And then ask me the question I need to hear, because I want to understand what happened, so I can get back on the water.
These are not bad excuses. Burying a parent is a sacred duty in Jewish culture. Saying goodbye to family is reasonable. That's exactly what makes this passage so sharp, Jesus isn't responding to laziness or rebellion. He's responding to delay. And delay, He suggests, is its own kind of refusal.
The kingdom doesn't wait for the right moment. It doesn't pause while we sort out the reasonable things first. And the plow image is telling: you can't plough a straight furrow while looking backward. The whole field gets crooked. Looking back while trying to go forward produces nothing useful.
What Jesus is naming is the posture of people who genuinely want to follow, just not yet. Not until this is resolved, not until the timing is better, not until the cost is lower. And He's saying: there is no better time. The cost doesn't get lower. Later is often never.
What is my version of "let me first"? What have I been waiting to resolve before I follow more completely, and how long have I been waiting?
Lord, I keep delaying. I have reasons, good ones, reasonable ones. But I know some of them are excuses dressed in responsible clothing. I don't want to put my hand to the plow and keep looking back. Help me go now.
They wanted the glory without the cup. Jesus told them plainly: you will drink the cup. And they still wouldn't get the seats. The seats weren't His to give: they were prepared for someone else. The whole conversation lands completely differently than they intended.
But He didn't send them away ashamed. He used their ambition to teach everyone. Whoever wants to be great must become servant of all. Whoever wants to be first must become last. This isn't reverse psychology. It's a completely different value system. Not power exercised over others, power poured out for others.
And then He pointed to Himself. The Son of Man did not come to be served. He came to serve. To give His life. If the Son of God defines greatness as servanthood, and we keep defining it as position: we are following someone we haven't really understood yet.
Where in my life am I seeking position, recognition, or the best seat? Where do I want the glory without the cup: the honor without the cost?
Lord, root out the ambition in me that wants the seat more than the service. I want to be genuinely great by Your definition, not performing humility, but actually preferring others. Make me small enough to serve well.
Martha wasn't wrong to serve. Hospitality was sacred. She was doing something genuinely good, and she was doing it alone, for a houseful of guests, while her sister sat doing nothing visible. Her frustration is understandable. I've felt exactly what Martha felt. I suspect most of us have.
But Jesus didn't rebuke her activity. He named what the activity was crowding out. Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, but one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what will not be taken from her.
The word for "chosen" implies a deliberate act. Mary chose. She was sitting where serving could have pulled her away from, and she stayed. She chose the one thing in a room full of urgent competing things, and Jesus said that choice would not be taken from her. He would defend it.
There will always be something to do. There will not always be this moment, this access, this nearness.
Am I busy serving Jesus while quietly missing Him? What would it take to sit down at His feet today, not when everything is done, but right now?
I confess that I'm more comfortable doing than being. Active feels like faithfulness, and stillness feels like laziness. But You're calling me to the one thing. Today I choose it. Don't let me be moved from it by the urgency of everything else.
They'd been walking with Jesus. They'd seen healings, heard teaching that reshaped the world, watched Him move through crowds. And somewhere along the road, the question they were actually asking each other was: which of us matters most?
In that culture, a child had no status. No social currency. Nothing to offer. Welcoming a child cost you something, time, attention, dignity in a world where dignity was publicly transacted. Jesus placed one beside Him and said: this. The one who welcomes this is the one who gets it.
Kingdom greatness isn't measured by who you attract to your platform. It's measured by who you notice when there's nothing to gain. The person who can give you nothing. The one who doesn't advance your reputation or your goals. The child standing at the edge of the room.
Who do I overlook because they can't benefit me? What does my actual, daily version of greatness look like, and how different is it from a child placed beside Jesus?
Change what I'm reaching for. Strip away the ambition that wants to matter to the right people. Let me notice the ones at the edge of the room, and let that be enough.
Peter got it right, and then almost immediately got it completely wrong. He confessed the Messiah and then, in the same conversation, rebuked the Messiah for saying what the Messiah came to do. Jesus called it what it was: you are thinking like a human, not like God.
The confession and the cross are in the same passage. That's not incidental. Jesus blessed the confession and then immediately revealed what it meant. The Messiah suffers. The Messiah dies. And following the Messiah, genuinely following, not just admiring, means picking up your own cross.
Whoever saves their life will lose it. Whoever loses it for Jesus will find it. This is not a metaphor that stays comfortable when you press on it. It's the whole logic of the kingdom, and it runs exactly counter to every instinct we have about self-preservation.
The confession comes first. But what follows the confession is the whole story.
Have I said "You are the Messiah" without really hearing what comes next: the cross, the self-denial, the losing in order to find? What part of the cost am I still negotiating?
I confess You. You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God. And I ask for the courage to follow what that confession actually requires, not just to say it, but to pick up the cross it leads to.
Healing, restoration, and the relentless way Jesus moves toward the broken rather than past them.
She pressed through a crowd she wasn't supposed to be in, to touch the edge of a cloak she had no right to touch, believing it would be enough. Twelve years of worsening. Twelve years of being excluded. She came in desperation, in secret, hoping to slip away healed.
Jesus stopped the whole crowd. His disciples thought the question was absurd: You're surrounded by people, and You ask who touched You? But He felt something specific happen. Power had gone out from Him. He knew. And He waited.
She came forward trembling, fell at His feet, told Him the whole truth. All of it. The years, the spending, the worsening. Everything she'd carried and hidden. And He called her daughter. The only time in the Gospels Jesus uses that word. Daughter. Your faith has healed you. Go in peace.
He didn't have to stop. He could have let her go healed without the conversation. He stopped because the healing wasn't the whole thing. He wanted her to know she was seen. Known. Named. That matters more than the miracle.
Have I been afraid to press toward Jesus because I feel too broken, too disqualified, too far outside the crowd? What would it mean to reach for the hem today, in secret, trembling, and trust that He will stop?
I am reaching. I am afraid. I've been bleeding in ways I don't talk about for longer than feels reasonable. But I believe, help my unbelief, that even the edge of You is enough for all of me. Stop for me too.
Thirty-eight years. More than half a life. And Jesus walks up and asks if he wants to be healed. The question seems almost cruel, of course he does. Why else would he be there? But the man's answer reveals something important: he doesn't say yes. He explains why it hasn't worked.
"I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred." It's an answer about the obstacle, not about the desire. He's so fixed on the system, the pool, the stirring, the competition, that when a different kind of healing shows up, he doesn't know how to respond to it.
Jesus healed him anyway, which is grace. But the question is worth sitting with: do I want to get well? Really? Because sometimes we've been unwell for so long that the identity of it has become comfortable. We know how to live around the wound. We've built a life next to the pool.
Jesus asks the question anyway. Do you want to get well?
Is there a stuck place, a wound, a pattern where Jesus might be asking me the same question, and I'm answering with an explanation of why it hasn't changed instead of a yes?
Yes. I want to get well, even the parts of being unwell I've quietly gotten used to. Even the identity I've built around the wound. Heal what I've stopped believing can actually change.
Jesus saw their faith: the four friends', not the paralyzed man's. The man himself said nothing in this story. His friends did all of it. They carried him, climbed a roof, dismantled it, and lowered him down in front of a crowded room. That is not a small act. That is love that problem-solves instead of gives up.
And Jesus said: your sins are forgiven. Not: your legs are healed. Forgiveness first, which told the religious leaders watching exactly who He believed He was. They were scandalized. He healed the legs to prove the authority behind the forgiveness. But He led with the deeper wound.
There's something here about intercession. About being the kind of friend who carries someone to Jesus when they can't get there themselves. Most of us know at least one person who is too paralyzed by life to press through the crowd. We can carry them. We can pray. We can dig through a roof if we have to.
Who do I know who needs someone to carry them to Jesus right now? Am I praying for them, or have I decided the crowd is too thick: that they're too heavy, too far gone, too complicated?
Give me the kind of faith that digs through roofs. Show me who You want me to carry. And for the ways I am paralyzed, let someone be carrying me even when I don't know it.
She didn't ask. She was past asking. She was in the middle of burial, which means she had moved through grief into the practical administration of loss. She wasn't crying out to Jesus. She was just trying to get through the day.
Jesus didn't wait to be petitioned. He saw her and was moved. The word Luke uses, splagchnizomai, means His gut wrenched. His bowels moved with compassion. This is not a polite, managed response. It's physical. He was undone by her grief before He did anything about it.
He didn't ask her about her faith. He didn't explain what He was about to do. He told her not to weep, stopped the procession, and spoke to the dead man. The crowd was afraid and praised God. She got her son back.
I return to this passage when I'm past the asking stage, when I've moved into just trying to get through the day. Jesus didn't require a request here. He responded to grief. He stops processions.
Do I believe Jesus can be moved by what's moving me, even when I haven't asked, even when I've given up asking, even when I'm in the middle of carrying something out for burial?
Lord, You see what I'm carrying out. I didn't even know to ask. But You stopped the procession for her, uninvited, unsolicited, because You were moved. Stop mine too. I trust that You are moved by what is moving me.
He ran to Jesus, even in his torment, even with every force inside him working against it, there was something in him that ran toward rather than away. That's the first thing. The most broken person in this story still ran to Jesus.
Jesus asked his name. In the middle of everything, the chaos, the danger, the desperate situation, He stopped to ask a name. Not as a ritual. Because He wanted to know who He was talking to. The person under the possession. He saw a man, not a problem.
Jesus crossed a body of water, an entire sea, to come to one person who lived in a graveyard outside the boundaries of respectable religion. One person. Who no one else could help, who everyone else had given up on. And when it was done, He told him: go home to your people and tell them how much the Lord has done for you.
He crossed water for someone who lived among the dead. He will cross whatever is between Him and you.
What feels too dark, too layered, too far beyond saving for Jesus to address? Is there something I've locked away among the tombs because I don't believe He'd come that far?
Come to the place in me that I've sealed off and called beyond help. You crossed water for him. You crossed into enemy territory. You asked his name. Come here. Ask mine. I'm running toward You even if everything in me is trying to run away.
The crowd told him to be quiet. He shouted louder. That is the whole shape of his faith: he would not be silenced by the respectable people between him and Jesus. He would not reduce his need to fit the social comfort of the crowd.
And then, before the miracle, before Jesus had even reached him, he threw off his cloak. His begging cloak. The thing that identified him, that he spread on the ground to collect coins, his only real belonging. He threw it off before he could see, before he'd been told he was healed. He was already done being what he'd been before.
Jesus asked him the same question He asked the man at the pool: what do you want Me to do for you? This time there was no explanation, no obstacle, no describing the system that wasn't working. One sentence: Rabbi, I want to see. Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus on the road.
Loud faith. Persistent faith. Faith that throws off the old thing before the new thing has fully arrived. That's what this looks like.
Am I being quieted by the crowd, well-meaning voices telling me to stop asking for so much, to be more realistic, to settle down? What would it look like to shout louder instead?
I will not be quiet. Son of David, have mercy on me. I am throwing off the cloak: the old identity, the old label, the way I've described myself to survive. I want to see. I am done waiting politely.
He bent down and wrote in the dirt. Of all the things He could have done, argued theology, invoked authority, declared a verdict, He bent down. We don't know what He wrote. What we know is the posture: unhurried, unhurried, unhurried. While they waited for a verdict, He was drawing in the dust.
When He stood and spoke, it was one sentence that emptied the courtyard. And then He bent down again, until it was just the two of them. He didn't rush the moment. He waited until the crowd was gone.
Then: His first question wasn't about her sin. It was about her accusers. Has no one condemned you? No one, Lord. Neither do I. Go. Leave your life of sin.
Mercy before instruction. Always. Not instead of instruction, the "go and sin no more" is real, but before it. He didn't lead with the sin. He led with the absence of condemnation. She needed to hear that first. So do we.
Is there something I've been dragged before the crowd for, something I carry shame about, that I haven't let Jesus address when the crowd has gone? What would He say to me in the quiet?
The crowd has gone. It's just You and me. I have heard condemnation from so many directions that I've started to believe it's true. Tell me what You told her. And then tell me where to go from here.
Truth, clarity, and the quiet danger of knowing without yielding, of being close to God in theory but far in practice.
He came at night. That detail is not accidental, John almost never wastes a detail. Nicodemus came when no one would see him, when there was no social cost to the visit. He had too much to lose to come in daylight. So he came in the dark.
He came with a compliment. We know You're from God, because of the signs. He opened with theological affirmation and waited to see where it went. And Jesus went somewhere completely unexpected: you must be born again. Not grow, not reform, not improve the system you already have. Start over. From above.
The most educated religious leader in Israel was being told he had missed the beginning. That the whole elaborate structure of knowledge and observance he'd built wasn't the door: it was a wall in front of the door. You must be born of water and Spirit. What you can produce yourself is not enough.
Nicodemus shows up again in John, once defending Jesus before the council, once bringing burial spices after the crucifixion. He moved from night visits to public acts. The conversation in the dark changed something in him over time.
Is there any part of my faith that is more about religious knowledge and respectability than genuine transformation? Am I still coming to Jesus at night, in private, where there's no cost to it?
Lord, I don't want to be a permanent night visitor, close enough to have a conversation, careful enough to stay hidden. Bring me into the daylight. Do whatever the new birth requires. Even if it means starting over.
This is the Jesus we weren't always taught. He was not calm here. He was not managing the situation or engaging in patient dialogue. He made a whip from cords, which takes time, which means this was not an impulsive reaction, and He cleared the court.
His disciples remembered a Psalm: zeal for Your house will consume me. That's the word. Consumed. He was consumed with it. Not with the sacrifices, not with the system, with the space that had been displaced. The outer court was the court of the Gentiles. The only place the nations could come and pray. And it had been filled with commerce.
Sometimes love for what is sacred looks like righteous anger at what has displaced it. Not every uncomfortable disruption is wrong. Some tables need to be overturned. The question is always: what has moved into my house of prayer and made itself at home in the space that belongs to God?
What has taken up residence in the space meant for God in my life, busyness, noise, distraction, comfort, productivity? What needs to be overturned so the house of prayer can be a house of prayer again?
Come and overturn what doesn't belong. I give You permission to clear the court: the things I've let take up the space that was meant for prayer, for silence, for You. Even if it's loud and disruptive, I want my house to be a house of prayer.
They were looking for a theological debate. He gave them a life. The whole of the law, by some rabbinical counts, 613 commandments, hangs on two words: love God, love people. Not know the most. Not attend the most. Not have the most refined theology. Love.
He quoted Deuteronomy 6: the Shema, the central confession of Jewish faith, something every Jewish person had said daily since childhood. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. Then Leviticus: love your neighbor as yourself.
Together they are the shape of the whole law. And they are both active. Both relational. Both requiring something of me beyond intellectual assent. I can agree with every doctrine and be nowhere near this.
The Pharisees came looking for a wedge. He gave them the axle everything turns on. It's so simple it becomes the most demanding thing in the world. Love God. Love people. Everything else is commentary.
If I'm honest, what do I actually prioritize in my daily faith? Being right? Being busy? Being respected? What does it look like to reduce everything to love God, love people?
Reduce me to this. Strip away everything that isn't love. The ambition, the defensiveness, the need to be right, the busyness that looks like faithfulness but isn't. Let these two commands be the actual shape of my life, not just my theology.
The Pharisees had more theology than the formerly blind man. They also had more blindness. He had never seen, and he could see exactly who Jesus was. They had always had their sight, and they could not see Him at all. The irony is the whole sermon.
They kept interrogating him: give glory to God, this man is a sinner. And his answer kept getting simpler and bolder. Whether He's a sinner, I don't know. One thing I do know: I was blind, but now I see. He didn't have a theological framework. He had a testimony. And the Pharisees had no answer for it.
By the end, they threw him out of the synagogue. Jesus heard about it and went looking for him, to find the one the religious system had expelled. That's worth sitting with. The church rejected him. Jesus went and found him.
Meeting Jesus doesn't leave anyone neutral. The same encounter that opened one man's eyes hardened another's heart. The question is which one we're becoming.
Where is my theological framework protecting me from seeing what Jesus is actually doing? Am I more committed to my interpretive system than to following where He leads?
Lord, I don't want to be the kind of person who investigates a miracle to death, who can't receive what You're doing because it doesn't fit my framework. Give me the simple sight of the man who just says: I was blind. Now I see.
This brother is often treated as a minor character, but Jesus told this whole parable to the Pharisees, to people who had stayed faithful, who had done the right things, who kept the law. They were the elder brother. That's why the story ended where it did: with a question hanging in the air.
His sin wasn't rebellion. It was resentment. He stayed. He obeyed. And somewhere along the years, the staying became scorekeeping. He'd never been given a party. He'd never been celebrated. He'd done everything right and received what felt like nothing, while the son who'd done everything wrong got the robe and the ring and the fatted calf.
He couldn't celebrate because he hadn't understood what he had. Son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. He'd been living in the house, working in the fields, eating at the table, and hadn't known what that meant. The prodigal knew what he'd come home to. The elder brother didn't know where he'd been all along.
The father came outside for him too. The story isn't over.
Is there a prodigal in my world whose return I'm struggling to celebrate? Is there any part of me that is keeping score on grace, quietly resentful of what others receive?
Lord, show me where I've been the elder brother, faithful on the outside, resentful on the inside. Where I've been keeping score instead of receiving what You've freely given me all along. Come outside and find me. I don't want to stay in the field.
The woes are not directed at irreligious people. They're warnings to the most religious people in the room, people who knew Scripture, who prayed long prayers, who fasted, who tithed even their herbs. And the charges against them were not paganism. They were pride, performance, and using religion as leverage.
They tied up heavy loads and put them on people's shoulders without lifting a finger to help. They did everything to be seen. They loved the best seats, the public greetings, the titles. They shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces, which is perhaps the most devastating charge. They were supposed to open the door. They were closing it.
Jesus reserved His harshest words for this. Not for the outsiders, the broken, the desperate. For the people who used religion as a way to be important. And the antidote He offers is simple: the greatest among you will be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled. Whoever humbles himself will be exalted.
This is a passage for people who have been in the faith for a long time. It's a mirror.
Does my faith make following Jesus easier or harder for the people around me? Am I carrying heavy loads I've also quietly placed on others? What does my religion look like to someone watching from the outside?
Lord, strip away every performance. Every title I hold too tightly. Every way I've made my faith about being seen or respected or right. Make me genuinely humble, not performed humility, the real kind that doesn't think about itself.
They didn't want an answer. They wanted a trap. If He claimed divine authority, they could charge Him with blasphemy. If He claimed human authority, they could dismiss Him. They came to this conversation with an agenda, not a genuine question. And Jesus knew it.
His question about John's baptism would have answered their question perfectly, if they'd been willing to follow it honestly. But they weren't. They calculated the political cost of each possible answer and chose silence. If they answered honestly, they'd have to respond honestly to Him. They weren't willing to do that.
So the door stayed shut. Not because Jesus refused to answer, but because they refused to be answered. You cannot receive from someone you've decided in advance you will not submit to. Authority given by God can only be received by those willing to be genuinely open.
This is the last word of Week Four, not an outsider rejecting Jesus, but the most religious, most educated, most powerful religious leaders of their generation, choosing to stay closed. It's a warning to anyone who has been around faith long enough to become immune to it.
Am I ever more interested in questioning Jesus' authority than in surrendering to it? Where do I demand explanations or credentials instead of simply obeying what He's already said clearly?
Lord, I'm done calculating the cost of every answer. I'm done coming to You with an agenda. You are who You are. I don't need more credentials. I submit. Open whatever I've kept closed by pretending I was still deciding.
Thirty encounters. Thirty mirrors. These final two days are for you, not for more information, but for response.
Jesus didn't bring up the denial. He didn't require a confession or an apology before proceeding. He just made breakfast. And then He asked a question. The same question, in the same number as the denials, at a charcoal fire, exactly the kind that had been burning when Peter swore he didn't know Him.
Peter was hurt by the third asking. Not by the first two, but by the third, he felt something. And maybe that was the point. Three times he'd failed. Three times Jesus was asking something back into place. Do you love Me? Not: have you repented enough? Not: are you ready to be useful? Do you love Me?
The commission that follows, feed my sheep, tend my lambs, is not a performance evaluation. It's the work that flows from love. Jesus didn't restore Peter's ministry and then ask if he loved Him. He asked if he loved Him and then gave him the ministry. Love is the ground everything else grows from.
He is still asking. To you. Right now, after this month. After whatever has happened in your story, after however many times you've gone back on what you said. Do you love Me?
Do you love Me?, How do you answer today, honestly? Not theologically. Not with a church answer. Actually, right now, in the real state of your heart?
Lord, You know all things. You know I love You, and You know all the ways that love has been weak and inconsistent and afraid. I'm not hiding from the question. Yes. I love You. Restore what I've denied. Give me back the thing I walked away from. I'll tend the lambs.
Matthew didn't edit out the doubters. Some worshipped, and some doubted, and then Jesus addressed them all. He didn't wait for the doubters to sort themselves out before commissioning them. He didn't require certainty as a prerequisite for being sent. He commissioned the worshippers and the doubters together, because that is what the church has always been.
All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Therefore go. The commission doesn't come from our confidence. It comes from His authority. We go not because we're ready, but because He is already everything we'd need to be ready to go.
And then: I am with you always, to the very end of the age. That is the promise. Not that the path will be clear. Not that the doubts will disappear. Not that you will feel equipped. I am with you. Always. That's the ground everything else stands on.
You have spent thirty days in encounters where Jesus met people who were broken, proud, committed, afraid, desperate, religious, hungry, excluded, and ashamed. He met all of them. He is the same One, and He is asking something of you today. Not tomorrow when you're more ready. Today.
What is the one brave step?
What is the one brave step Jesus is asking me to take from this 30-day journey? Not an answer for someone else. Not a vague intention. Something specific, something today, something I've been holding back from.
I take the step. Shaky or steady, I take it. I don't have to feel ready. You are with me, and You have all authority, and that is enough. Show me the one thing. And I'll do it in Your name, trusting that You go with me, because You said You would, and to the very end of the age.
Prefer to read the complete guide as a single post?
30 Encounters with Jesus: A Journey Through the GospelsWith honesty and hope, Claire