Good Friday morning! Just when I was starting to wonder about the hurricane season, I see a news item about Hurricane Danielle and other storms forming out in the Atlantic. Did you hear that NASA is offering advice to the Chilean miners trapped in the cave-in? They may be stuck in that tunnel for four months or more, I think they need a higher power - remember them in your prayers. Perhaps someone in that tunnel will find an answer he didn't know that he had asked the question for. Today, we get Nicodemus' first reaction to Jesus' statement about being born again.
"What do you mean?" exclaimed Nicodemus. "How can an old man go back into his mother's womb and be born again?" John 3:4
Exactly what you or I might have asked in Nicodemus' place at that time. Eh? Be born again; is the man daft? No weekly or annual sacrifices, no attention to every detail of the Law, no personal code of goodness - Jesus simply tells the learned man of the Pharisees that he must be born again to see the Kingdom of God. Of course Nicodemus is more than a little confused. His entire religious system has just been called into question. We know the solution is speaking to him and sitting right in front of him, but Nicodemus doesn't realize that yet. He asks the obvious: "How can that happen?" We are often limited by our physical senses in a fallen world. We cannot go back to infancy, climb back into our mothers and be reborn. Those fantasies always include having the advantage of our lifetime of experience to build on. Nicodemus apparently had quite a bit of experience he wanted to hold onto as well for he refers to himself as an old man. By this time in his life, Nicodemus may think that he has a pretty good idea of what is possible. Jesus seems to have set an impossible task before him.
What task has Jesus given you that seemed impossible when you first learned of it? Let me guess on that one... all of 'em? I think that God likes to show us his power and mercy in the tasks he sets before us. How would we come to believe in his saving power if every task he gave us was of the mundane sort that each of us could do on our own? Nicodemus probably had a lot of book smarts, experience, and authority in his life. But Jesus immediately set a task before him that he could in no way accomplish on his own. "You want to know about salvation? Go get born again!" How would we answer that upon hearing it for the first time. Of course we would be just as confused as poor Nicodemus. Jesus won't leave him, or us, hanging on that one though. Stay tuned for the great answers from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!
Have a relaxing and restoring weekend in Christ!
Bucky
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