Every day, it seems, our world becomes more divided because of official judgments made by the Supreme Court or other official jurists. Some affirm what our current President has done. Some negate what he has done.
I’m headed on vacation and taking Kate Murphy’s new book Lost, Hidden, Small: Finding the Way of Jesus Where We Never Think to Look with me. Kate opens with a story about a seminary preaching assignment when she was to write a sermon defining the Biblical words “judge” and “judgment.” In a conversation with her attorney father, he offered the brilliant idea that “everyone makes judgements, all people make decisions and choices all the time. But a judge is someone whose judgments really matter.”
Kate goes on to say that Jesus is the One whose judgment really matters. Amen.
We are overwhelmed with all manner of opinions and judgments every moment of our lives. I believe these constant opinions exhaust us.
Social media and cable news and network news and our family and our friends and bumper stickers and billboards and – God have mercy – politicians bombard us (and I use that verb intentionally) with opinions and judgments about everything from war to immigration to whether or not an escalator was sabotaged.
It feels like the latest court opinions and judgments are matters of life and death. Sometimes they truly are. But imagine living our lives as if the judgment of Jesus mattered most. Imagine seeing war and immigration and even politically-motivated sabotage through the lens of Jesus.
I’m headed to a quiet place for a week of vacation and I’m taking Kate’s new book. And I look so forward to considering how God uses the lost and hidden and small things of this life to shift how we see the world. I hope you have a good week too.
Kate Murphy is a pastor and theologian you should know. You can order her book here.
A Church for Starving Artists 