3 June 2017 - what's it to ya

Today's Readings

When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, "Lord, what about him?"
Jesus said to him, "What if I want him to remain until I come?
What concern is it of yours?
You follow me."

We should resist the trap of comparing ourselves to one another. We tend to look around and see people who are successfully following Jesus and want to be just like them. Their is much about such people that is indeed worthy of imitation. But that does not mean our lives are called to look just like theirs. God has a plan for each individual. That plan may look very different from one person to another. There is no archetypal "right way" to live life. There is no formula we can just see and follow for success. So we need not be jealous when others receive apparent blessings. It is enough to just follow Jesus.
Paul isn't trying to live out any preexisting formula. He might well be distressed by being a prison and then under house arrest. After all, his mission is to bring the gospel to the world and especially to the Gentiles. This can't be how he imagined it would go. Shouldn't there be more travel, more adventure, more proclamation to ears that have not heard the message? Yet he does not squander the opportunities of his present situation just because it doesn't match up to some ideal.

He remained for two full years in his lodgings.
He received all who came to him, and with complete assurance
and without hindrance he proclaimed the Kingdom of God
and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ.

Imprisonment and house arrest may hinder many things. But they do not hinder the purpose God has for him. He learns the truth that he later tells Timothy: "But the word of God is not bound!" (see Second Timothy 2:9).

So what if our lives don't match up with this or that Christian celebrity? So what if others seem more blessed than us? We need to worry about only one thing. We need to just follow Jesus. Like Peter, Paul, and Charles Lwanga and his companions, we need to follow him wherever he calls us. We learn that the success that looks good on TV really isn't the success that means the most to Jesus.

The just will gaze on your face, O Lord.