Verse for the Week of January 15
Verse for the week of January 15th:
The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee.
He found Philip and said to him, ‘Follow me.’
(John 1:43)
I am always amazed when I hear this verse and think about the first disciples of Jesus. Try to imagine the scene. Jesus is moving throughout the region and one day, he is on his trip and finds a person (Philip) and said to him, ‘Follow me’ and the person does. And in fact when we read the rest of the chapter we see where Philip goes and gets others (Nathanael) to come and see the one who called him to come and follow.
All we know is what is told to us in the Bible. We do not know if people knew who Jesus was before he came and called people to follow. We do not know if Jesus spent more time with them. All that is recorded in the Scriptures is that Jesus comes and calls people to follow and they do.
What amazes me is the power that Jesus must have displayed for people to encounter a person and then leave everything and follow. I try to put myself in the position of Philip and wonder how I would have responded to Jesus. If Jesus came to me and said follow me—what would I do?
I would hope that my response would have been the same as Philip’s, but I am not sure. I try to imagine having a person come up to me and say follow me. I think that I would have been filled with excuses—I have to care for my family, I have an appointment to go to, and on and on the excuses could go on. After all; would I leave everything and follow this person that called me to follow?
The question for us today may be more: what does it mean to follow Jesus today? How do we allow Jesus to lead and us to follow? One of the most important ways to live this out would be to not put ourselves first, but to seek first to do the will of God. Many of the excuses that we may make reflect putting our own wills above the will of God. It is easy to think of ourselves first rather than others or God. Changing this would be a good step in our world today in seeking to follow Jesus.
Comments are closed.