Remembering With GodSample

Remembering That Jesus "Takes" Us

Jesus’ power is in taking people from randomness and obscurity and moving them into the light for the sake of telling a new story about God’s work in the world. He is changing everyone’s memories each time he resists the common charge to separate, distinguish, and alienate. 

He takes a leper and makes him clean, which first requires Jesus sharing the leper’s presence (Matthew 8:2). He takes a Samaritan—symbolically through a story of compassion—and brings him into the pantheon of folk heroes (Luke 10:30-37). He takes a criminal, executed by the state for insurrection much like Jesus was, and invites him into paradise despite the criminal’s questionable résumé (Luke 23:43). 

We cannot experience and memorize the stories of Jesus without seeing his radical inclusion—taking those who were left on the edges of society, left to their own solitude, and bringing them into his kingdom. 

Today, bring to mind a memory of a time when you were excluded and left out. Invite Jesus into a conversation about that moment in time. How does his inviting and including you in the kingdom begin to redeem that memory? 

From As I Recall by Casey Tygrett