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Tony Graffanino shares thoughts on how we might respond to his previous message from the opening greeting of Paul's letter to Titus.

Tony Graffanino leads us to reflect on the way that the apostle Paul saw himself. Do we see ourselves as a servant of Jesus who has been entrusted with a message and sent on a mission to deliver that message?

Jesus knew that he was about to be executed, that he had been secretly betrayed by one of his friends and that he is going to be vindicated by God, and yet he gets up from the table, takes his sweatshirt off, grabs a towel and a bucket of water and begins to do a slaves’ job of washing the disciples’ feet.

How many of us find ourselves sometimes seeking Jesus out for the wrong reasons? We hope a relationship with him or a prayer thrown his way might help us in our pursuit for security, success, health or prosperity. Jesus might say to us, “Don’t just seek me out for temporary provision or blessing; seek me out for the brand new life that I am able to give you.”

So is Jesus on the side of justice or compassion? The religious leaders want him to pick a side. We often want him to pick a side. In this story, Jesus is refusing to join in on the debate, but the religious leaders aren’t going to stop pushing him to choose.

The Almighty God of this world is probably the most misunderstood and misrepresented being in human history. Many people have many wrong ideas about who he is and what he is like. And like Moses and Philip, many people just want to see God so that they can truly know who he is and what that means for them.

How should followers of Jesus respond to the threat of a global pandemic, the increasing political division in this country, and the underlying issues of injustice, inequality and racial tension that are front-and-center in our society right now?

There is a trap that Jesus addresses, and all of us can fall into it. We get selective in the way that we obey what God has said in the Scriptures, and then we find subtle ways to twist the Scriptures to justify certain preferences and behaviors in our life.

Many of us, even those who read our Bibles and say our prayers, end up with misconceptions about who God is and what he is doing in the world. We are the sheep of his pasture and when one of us goes wandering off, he comes looking for us. Jesus said, “I have come to seek and to save the lost” because God does not give up on people as easily as we give up on people.

There are times when we are desperate for help (we’re going through a difficult time, we’re in a slump, or our marriage is struggling, or a pandemic is occurring, or whatever), and so we cry out to God for help and we are willing to do whatever he tells us to do. But then when he gets us through it and things start to go well for us again, we forget about God and we just get back to life as normal.