Greetings, dear friends.
I didn’t have time for my regular little excursion with Tazzy this morning. He was bummed again. I had to hurry off to sit in a dental chair. But I did get in a pretty good round of exercise yesterday afternoon—playing in the snow on Mt. Hood. It was amusing that almost everyone I rode the chairlift with were from the East Coast.
Lots of work pushing on me. Better keep moving. Be blessed. Ray. (Oh—there’s the timer alarm! Becki just left with me in charge of removing bread from the oven.)
Let’s first give some attention to the common ailment of a BAD MEMORY. Very likely we are all afflicted to some degree. But these disciples seem to be exceptional at memory loss. I can’t be sure of the exact lapse of time between chapters 8 and 9, but it couldn’t have been very long. It’s just kind of crazy that they would not “have a clue what he meant” when He spoke of His upcoming arrest, torture, death, and resurrection when He so recently spelled it all out. Consider again chapter 8 verses 31 and 32: “From then on, Jesus began to tell his disciples that he, the Son of Man, was destined to go Jerusalem and suffer great injustice from the elders, leading priests, and religious scholars. He also explained that he would be killed and three days later be raised to life again. Jesus opened his heart and spoke freely with his disciples, explaining all these things to them.”
If we were to generate some lesson value from the poor memory of the disciples, I suppose this could be a good time to underscore the value of Scripture memorization. Taking time to identify and commit to memory certain important portions of Biblical truth and instruction really offer an essential ongoing resource of inspiration, meditation, encouragement, and guidance when one’s Bible is out of reach or out of sight.
Let’s also give attention to the common emotion of embarrassment. What is the root cause of embarrassment? Isn’t it a general dislike of transparency?—that others are now made to know something true about you that you would prefer they didn’t?—kind of like how I felt after presenting an entire Sunday School lesson several years ago, only to learn later that my zipper was down.
Anyway, I have to conclude that it was highly unnecessary for the disciples in this setting to be too embarrassed to ask Jesus anything. Is there even any room for embarrassment in the presence of Sovereign omniscience?—One who knows everything about everything?
Proverbs 3:5-6 rises in my mind again to be a timely and relevant nugget of Biblical advice.