Jesus and the Delete Button

I just deleted Jesus! Well maybe not Jesus Himself but rather another dreadful and manipulative e-mail that warned, "Send this to five (or ten or fifteen) people within five minutes of reading it or Jesus will deny you, too."

Does your In Box get cluttered with these things? "Show Jesus you are not ashamed to tell everyone how you feel." Sappy stories we have all read fifty times, dull recitations of Christian statistics, or imagined 'laws' against Believers being drafted by Congress. All dressed up in righteousness and laden with guilt. Those messages are not helpful. Jesus isn't waiting to see how we're going to respond. There is no real test involved and we need to tell the people who send those things out to just stop it.

Such messages are not about religion but rather about being religious. Jesus expressed His feelings about that when He squashed the Sadducees and Pharisees in the temples.

I think Jesus is really waiting to see if we will listen to Him rather than Forward Him. How can we serve Him if we are sitting in our warm and comfy offices reading those e-mails and dutifully sending them off to another fifteen people? I think He would prefer we hit the highways and byways to see what people need. Ever been in a grocery store where a mother had to select items to put back because she didn't have quite enough money for everything? I think the Lord would be more impressed if we gave her the extra money than if we rushed back home to send her an e-mail about His love and compassion.

What if you hit the delete button on that message and went to a nursing home and visited five or six elderly people who are staring vacantly at Judge Judy or Montel Williams because no one bothers to sit down and ask them what they are thinking. How tragic it must be to have opinions and solutions running around in your head but just because you have grown old and feeble, no one thinks you have a brain.
What if you dared to erase that drivel and instead went down to the local Salvation Army office and helped serve lunch to cold and hungry street people? I suppose the list of things you could do to serve the Lord is endless. Hospital visits. Baby sitting so tired young parents can have an evening out. Taking an elderly neighbor to a movie.

I refuse to believe my Lord will be impressed if I stay home and forward that message to everyone in my address book, making them feel guilty for deleting it.

As Christians, let's make a pact. We will delete Jesus from our In Box and go out into the world and do the things He asked us to do. Remember, He gave us a Great Commission, "Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age." Matthew 28:19.

About The Author-- Beverly Vines-Haines has published newspaper feature stories, magazine columns and several novels. She ghostwrites for celebs and people on lecture circuits. Managing Treasure Leaf Publishing, she primarily writes for http://www.themustardtree.net.

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