I’ve been gone for a few days on a getaway with my family.
It was good, but it was also a lot of work.
I’m talking about camping in the Florida Keys and making many of the preparations for six adults.
Lori was very helpful, lightening the workload a bit and I am quite grateful for her diligent nature.
I had a hunch about the amount of work that would be required but I didn’t know what would be involved.
I do now.
And I’d still make the same choice, mosquitoes, “NoSeeUm” biting flies, humid heat and all.
Why? Because showing my love for family was far more valuable than the cost of effort and time and money paid in order to provide for the loved ones.
I thought of this truth this morning while reflecting on Tuesday’s John 19:38-42 reading in the One-Year Bible. In that passage, Joseph of Armithea and Nicodemus laid their social, political, financial, theological stakes on the line by going to Pontius Pilate and asking for the body of Jesus that had just been crucified.
Both were prominent, socially established Jews in good standing with the ecclestiastical authorities and each had to have been aware of the consequences of being perceived as sympathetic to the Preacher hated — and essentially murdered — by the Sanhedrin.
It was going to be costly in some way to them, they almost certainly knew.
But not doing what the Lord was calling their hearts to do would have been even more costly.
Somehow, some way, Jesus had become as family to them and they were going to do whatever it took in order to show their love.
When they apparently “signed on” earlier as secret supporters of Jesus, Joseph and Nicodemus didn’t know that they would be putting their worlds on the line for a Messiah who had just been murdered.
But when a need arose that perhaps they alone could resolve, they put their shoulders to the wheel and their self-interests on the back burner, doing all that was needed, hassles and potential hassles and all.
They did it because of love.
Stinging words from some surely did follow.
The heat of peer pressure and social isolation surely followed as well.
But serve their Messiah they did.
I’m glad.
And I’m instructed.
Please, when the Holy Spirit is stirring your heart to do something for Jesus, even though influential people around you won’t like it, show your love of family.
Put in the work for others.
Put up with the buzzing and biting and stinging and oppressive heat on you.
It’s what we do for family.
Whatever we do will be far less than what Jesus did for us.
As always, I love you
Martin
