The Asher Update

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June 26, 2005

June 26, 9 AM

asher had a great night. gloria said that he must have just been worn out from being so restless for days and nights now. she was actually able to get some sleep herself, which she has never been able to do before when she has spent the night in his room.

"don't worry about tomorrow, today has enough worries in itself." those words have constantly been ringing in my ears. i slept really well, also, but i woke up this morning thinking of all the things i need to do in order to get ready for our family to move to atlanta tomorrow. i know that hadrienne and gloria also have their mental lists as well.

i just have to keep reminding myself that every moment of every day has been taken care of since asher was first injured, and all the details that really need to be taken care of today will get done. my prayer is that my family and i will be able to tell the difference and not waste too much time on the ones that really don't matter.

yesterday i got an email from an old and dear friend of ours who said that as she has been following the updates on asher's daily improvements that it reminds her of the stages of development that a new born begins to go through. a few days before another woman also sent an email to me with similar thoughts. i have to admit that these have also been my thoughts for about a week now as well. asher is having to learn how to do almost every single thing all over again. in many ways it is like watching an infant developmentally progress at a greatly accelerated rate. in a strange way, there is something very familiar and comforting in this. it fills me with the same hope and anticipation that i had with both of my children when they were first infants for what they would developmentally grow to be.

for the first 3 years of my kids lives i could not stand to be away from them for more than a day (when i would have to go to work), because i was afraid that i would miss something very significant that they might do. i wanted to be there to hear the first words they said as well as the first steps they took. i find myself desperately feeling the same way about asher now. i don't want to miss any progress that he makes no matter how small or seemingly insignificant it might seem to others, every single moment since he was injured has become a miraculous moment, and i want to continue to live and breath everyone of them along with my family as God continues to carry all of us through this.

as God's children, this must be, in some part, the way that God gets excited and filled with anticipation for the ways that we developmentally come to rely on him. the ways that our speech changes as we recognize more and more that He is the author of all good things and we begin to give Him all thanks for it. the ways that our actions and attitudes change as we begin to become more concerned for the needs of others than we do for ourselves, and then we begin to actually do something about it, like giving a cup of cold water to the thirsty, visiting those who are sick or in prision, feeding those who are hungry and clothing those who are naked.

in recent years i have heard the parable of the good samaritan taught from the point of view that it is one of the Christian faith's strongest basis for the necessity of ministries of mercy to be fulfilled by the Church. this interpretation is based on the last part of this parable when Jesus asks the lawyer who, in the parable, showed love for his neighbor?, and the lawyer answer, "the one who showed mercy." jesus said that he had answered correctly and told him to go and do likewise.

the lawyer's answer here as well as jesus' command has been construed as being the over all point of this passage, that we are all to go out and demonstrate God's mercy to those in need. yet, if that is jesus' point then why are we not seeing this kind of mercy being poured out by the Church in america today?

i personally, have come to believe the error of this interpretation lies in the fact that it ignores the fact that this parable was told by jesus in direct response to the question that was first put to jesus by the lawyer. he asked jesus, "what must i do to be saved?" jesus, in turn, asked him what does the law say? the lawyer replies, "love God with all your mind heart and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself." jesus immediately affirms the lawyer for giving the right answer.

the lawyer, though, who must be feeling like he is doing a pretty good job at loving God completely as well as loving his neighbor as himself, pushes the point. the passage says that he actually wants to "justify himself" (be told by jesus that he is doing a pretty good job) so he asks jesus another question, "and who is my neighbor?"

jesus' answer this time is given as a parable (a word picture) so that not only the lawyer, but also everyone else who would ever read this parable, would be able to understand not only who our neighbor is, in God's eyes, and not only the ways that we are to demonstrate God's unconditional love for us by demonstrating that same unconditional love for others, but that this is also how God desires for us to worship him on an everyday basis. in this parable jesus is clearly presenting that that this kind of worship that He is giving us a picture of is one that is supposed to take place, in this parable, outside the walls of the temple, and even outside of the walls of jerusalem, and for us today this now means outside our church structures.

when jesus does finally finish this parable and asks the lawyer the answer to the lawyers original question, "and who is my neighbor?" the lawyer responds without hesitation: "the one who showed mercy." i do not believe, even remotely, that jesus was trying to communicate to the lawyer, and especially not us today, that His intention was for us to make mercy ministry a special category that is associated with particular gifts, calling and even office. rather, i completely believe, that just as jesus confirms to the lawyer that he has a correct understanding for what God's standard is for us to be saved is that we love Him with all of our heart and mind and soul and that we love our neighbor as ourselves that is God's same standard for the world today, and the evidence for it will be, what it has always, been, "the one's who show mercy."

the truth is that we cannot claim that we love our neighbors as ourselves if we do not love God completely, and we cannot claim that we love God completely if we do not love our neighbors as ourselves. in matthew 25, jesus is asked another question, but this time by His disciples. they want to know what God's criteria will be for separating the sheep from the goats? i believe that the answer that jesus gives to His disciples, and ultimately to all of us, is that God's standard for loving our neighbors as ourselves is "feeding the hungry, visiting the sick and imprisoned, giving the cup of cold water, clothing the naked." what is most amazing about this list is the fact that what the evangelical christian church today has made as it's priority in fullfilling God's standard for our loving Him completely and loving our neighbor as ourself, is no where on this list. their priority is evangelism, which today means having the unbeliever accept jesus by praying the sinner's prayer.

quite interestingly, not only does this priority for the evangelical church today not make it on jesus' matthew list, but it does not come up in the parable of the good samaritan either. the victim that is ultimately helped by the samaritan remains unconcious throughout the entire parable. in other words, the samaritan shows unconditional love to this victim despite the fact that he can't verbally witness to him.

over the years i have really struggled with the lack of mercy and compassion being demonstrated both by myself as well as the rest of the Church for all of the victims lying by the side of the road that God places in our path and this is from the pastor down they are being passed by.

a number of years ago i had a mission team coming to work with the widows ministry for a week one summer. on their way here their bus broke down about 2 hours outside of chattanooga about 8 PM on a saturday night. when they called i gave them the number for the pastor of a church nearby that was in their same denomination. i knew that this church, one, was fairly wealthy, and two, that they actually had a mercy ministry within their own church. i was honestly made speechless when this groups leader contacted me to say that he had spoken with the pastor and was told by him that he had just gotten back home from out-of-town not too long before and he still had to prepare his sermon for the next day and that there was nothing that either he could do for them.

the result was that it took all night to shuttle this group to chattanooga, because we couldn't find a vehicle large enough to carry all of them as well as their luggage, so several trips had to be made. the entire time i was driving back and forth to help transport this group this pastor, who had passed by on the other side of the road, who had placed what he considered to be his "high calling" before God's lowly calling for us to be servants first, and not be served, kept coming to mind in the context of the parable of the good samaritan, and i could not help but wonder, having closed his heart to both God and his neighbor in order to prepare his sermon the next day, what he could have possibly preached that had been inspired by the Lord.

i know that sharing what i have just shared will be very offensive to many of you who have come to this site to read the update about my very dear son, asher. honestly, as so many times when i have sat down to write a very brief update on asher's condition and progress, something else that i was not even thinking about comes out along with it, which has certainly been the case with this mornings update.

the great commission that is referenced so often by christians as the justification for evangelizing the way that it is being done by much of the church today, really is about making disciples, which is entirely different than trying to get people to recite a prayer. making disciples requires a willingness and desire by the one being discipled to surrender themselves to this way, and it also requires that the one who is fulfilling the discipleship role to walk in God's mercy, grace, love and compassion along side of that disciple. jesus, himself, provides us with the perfect model for what that discipleship process is supposed to look like. He also gives us an insight to the length of time that one might expect that process to last. jesus' time with his disciples lasted 3 years and after that time they were sent out to lovingly walk along side of other willing disciples. today's typical church model for discipleship, quite tragically, seems to be open ended, and can take up to 50 years or more, depending how long a person lives. and another interesting characteristic of this discipleship process is that it is also one that primarily only focuses inward. in other words, the discipleship focus tends to be more about building up the individual local church, or denomination, rather than the kingdom of God. unfortunately, if the truth be known, this has far more to do with the fear of losing potentially vasts amount of income for a church than for a fear of fullfilling God's standard for what it really means to love Him with all our heart mind and soul and to love our neighbor as ourself.

i, unfortunately, over the past few years have become entirely convinced that the sin of the church in america, as it is most obviously being demonstrated through the work of so many local churches in every city, town and state, that what has been written in ezekiel 16:49-50 about Sodom, exactly describes us today.
49.) "behold, this was the guilt of your sister sodom: she and her daughters had arrogance, abundant food, and careless ease, but she did not help the poor and needy. 50.) thus, they wee haughty and committed abominations before Me. therefore i removed them when i saw it."

as a christian, it is agonizing for me to even think such thoughts that i have tried to express in this update. it is equally agonizing for me to think that at the root and source of these thoughts is an uncaring leadership that has become so deceived themselves that they have inturn so greatly deceived so many of those that God has placed in their care. they have preached and taught that they are ok and that everything is going to be fine for them, but that world around them are the ones that are trying to corrupted not only their minds, but their very souls if that were possible. the reality is, though, that it is the church leadership that needs to take responsibility not only for it's own sin, and the subsequent sin of it's own church, but in taking responsibility for it means that it must then change the direction that it is heading in today. and that will ultimately mean the emptying itself of self, which is the very thing that it is more than willing to place on it's sheep in the building up of itself, but it is also the very thing that it is unwilling to do itself, in the building up of God's kingdom.

i have probably said this in another update, so please forgive me for digressing, but a dear sister said to me years ago when i was complaining about the church not doing what it is supposed to (empty itself of self) and she very wisely responded to me with "churches may not be doing what they are supposed to, but the church is." i knew as soon as she said it that she was right. just as i know today that the ways that God has moved in the hearts and minds of people all over the world to be moved to compassion for me and my family in the great outpouring of that love being expressed through prayer and service is one of the greatest evidences for all of us that the "church" is doing and will do what God has called it to do and be. one of our greatest obstacles for understanding this is to be able to understand the differences of purpose that God has for us in our churches and His church. they are two very distinct and almost entirely different things.

let me end this by saying that any motive that we have with regard to anyone or anything that is not based on unconditional love, is an impure motive. even evangelism. particularly evangelism as it is being carried out today. no matter how much we think we can justify our actions based on scripture, the very fact that we have to justify them should be the greatest indication for us that our motives are flawed. after all, did not even jesus say to the religious leaders "woe unto you justifiers of the truth?" and the very reason that He said this to them was because their justifications were not rooted in unconditional love, rather they were rooted in fear and power and control, because absolute power, and control and, yes, I believe even fear, corrupts absolutely.

asking forgiveness for any flawed interpretations or impure motives of my flesh in all that i have tried to share from my heart this morning,

i continue to be blessed beyond measure by God's continued outpouring of His mercy and grace in our lives,

andy mendonsa

| By Andy Mendonsa | 12:08 PM

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Posted by: jill mendonsa at June 26, 2005 01:57 PM

Posted by: grace at June 26, 2005 03:34 PM

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