7 July 2019
This is sheer goofiness: no walking staff, traveling bag, no sandals.
This just doesn’t make any sense. It was a hard and dangerous world out there.
No one with a wit of their senses would take off in 1st c. Palestine without a walking staff.
The roads were dangerous, Without a walking staff how could you defend yourself?
And you sure as heck wouldn’t take off without a little food for the journey.
You needed the food, the water–the traveling bag.
And finally, no matter how much you walked barefoot the rest of the time,
when you set off on the road you wore sandals. The roads were rocky.
Without sandals you’d never be able to run from an attacker.
It was a dangerous and hard world the disciples were sent into.
And maybe that was the point of all this foolishness.
The disciples were sent into the world, not the way it was, but the way it could be.
They were sent to live in a world–
without violence,
where no one went hungry,
where fear did not rule you.
They were the test case.
They said more by their lives than their words,
“Hey, look at us. You can live this way.”
Still, it was goofiness.
Aren’t you surprised anyone went?
And yet you and I are called to live in our world—not the way it is, but the way it could be.
What little part of the world the way it could be—
Without violence, without hunger, without fear,
Are you going to live this week?