One People of God - the difference with a difference

WORD 2day: Saturday, Fifth week in the Eastertide

May 04, 2024 - Acts 16: 1-10; John 15: 18-21 

Jesus would have found it an Heculean task to make his disciples and apostles understand that they are different and different in a particular way. That they were different, they knew immediately. Because they were chosen and they were going around with Christ, seeing him do things that they have never witnessed before. But this was a dangerous feeling of being different - it was like the Hebrews, who felt they were a chosen people and therefore different from others and as a result they despised the others in a way! Jesus' teaching was not the same.

That they were different - not in comparison to the others, but in their choices and their priorities. Jesus taught them that they did not belong to the world, that is, they did not belong to the mainstream that justified sins, glorified craftiness, longed for first places and died for power! He taught them to lookout for the lost, be with the least and be treated as the last. He told them to be ready to be hated, while everyone longed to be loved. 

That they were different, in a specific way - not trying to prove themselves to be better than the rest, but in having a mindset of total obedience and allegiance to the One who has made them, called them and love them. They were to listen to the Lord - they were expected to go where they are told and not to go where they are forbidden... because they are totally guided by that Voice, that Spirit, that Lord who has redeemed them. 

Today, we are called to be different from the others. This is not what every one goes crazy about - being different, doing something different and being different. This difference is a difference with a difference, a difference that says - I don't mind to lose, I don't mind being hated, I don't mind even being killed - for the sake of my call and the One who has called.