Good morning, everyone.
Our verse for today comes from Acts 10:41, “To us who ate and drank with Him after He rose from the dead.”
Last summer, in fact the night of my birthday, I went to the emergency room. I had been having excruciating pains in my lower right back that my wife and I guessed were related to gall stones, and unlike previous attacks where the pain would subside after a couple hours, this time it was holding on for dear life. So around midnight, after steady pleading from my better half, I relented and headed for the hospital. The agony was my own fault as I knew that generous amounts of pizza, which I had consumed at lunch after church, had the tendency to bring on an attack. And bring on an attack it did. As it turned out, I was suffering from a rather good-sized gall stone and an infected gall bladder, and surgery was scheduled to remove the culprits. And ever since I left the hospital, pizza nor any other food has yet to bother me or the space where my gall bladder used to be. My eating has remained essentially the same, but my condition has been altered. For the disciples of Jesus who followed and dwelt and dined with Him during His three-year ministry, eating and drinking with Him after He rose from the dead may have seemed, well, different. Clearly His condition had changed, having been dead and buried for parts of three days. But evidently, a risen Lord still gets hungry and thirsty and seeks fellowship with His followers. And a stomach and a gall bladder can still function properly when God breathes life back into them.
But those meals after the resurrection were nothing like the ones before. Death had been experienced and the tomb made empty, and ascension and glorification were soon to come. Any of these, not to mention all of them, would transform any and every moment from unremarkable to extraordinary. And so we should ask ourselves, what are we doing with the risen Lord? How are we spending our time with Him? Is He making what’s common to be wonderful? Have you been altered such that what you do is now done with a glorious purpose and a zeal and zest that comes from being reborn? Everything about you and your salvation is miraculous, and that should be making an enormous difference.
As we seek Him today, encounter the risen Jesus, who came to transform you, not just to improve you.
Have a super Tuesday.
#4 Rich Holt
Dad of Ripken, Koy, TrishaJean, Samantha, Kakie Holiday and Raleigh
Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them.
