Genie in a Bottle

I came upon this verse this past week, and I have been chewing and sharing it with others:

“After Jesus returned, he walked along Lake Galilee and then climbed a mountain and took his place, ready to receive visitors. They came, tons of them, bringing along the paraplegic, the blind, the maimed, the mute-all sorts of people in need-and more or less threw them down at Jesus’ feet to see what he would do with them. He healed them. When the people saw the mutes speaking, the maimed healthy, the paraplegics walking around, the blind looking around, they were astonished and let everyone know that God was blazingly alive among them.” (Matthew 15:29-31)

What strikes me most about this is that Jesus doesn’t decide to go into the town square, into peoples homes, or even into the temple to bless and heal people. Instead He climbs a mountain, waiting there to receive visitors. To me that seems a little crazy. Normally if I want to hang out with my friend Pat, I would probably go to his house or find a mutual space where we could meet easily. I don’t think that I would ever climb a mountain and wait there for Pat to come and find me; he would probably get pissed that he couldn’t find me and give up. The good news is that God is not like me. Jesus wanted to heal people and to be with people, but he chose to climb a mountain to wait for them to come to him. This is very counter to what most people believe about God. A lot of people’s idea of God is equated with a magic genie. A genie give us whatever we want, the second we ask for it, no waiting required. But with Jesus we have a journey to embark on, we have struggles and pain to endure and we have spiritual formation taking place every step we take. Christ calls us to Him because he wants to form us. Many times we don’t experience the miracle or experience the fullness of Christ because we quit, or because we wanted to serve the Genie god and didn’t want to climb the mountaine where Christ waits.

I think that many people don’t want to serve the God who climbs mountains and then calls after us to follow Him along the tough terrain. I think that they would rather serve the Genie god who gives us everything we every dreamt of, thought of, asked for, all in a blink of an eye, or the rub of a lamp. This way it is much easier. We don’t have to actually have faith or hope. We don’t ever have to change or deepen ourselves in Christ as we wait and traverse through the journey that He calls us on. We can get whatever we want whenever we want, all the while sitting on our asses. Its brilliant isn’t it?

God, when the journey gets rocky, I pray that you would help us to stick it out. Help us to realize that the tough parts of our life are just the times where we are climbing the mountain, and you are at the top waiting to embrace us. Give us hope and faith to know that you are forming us and shaping us to become more like you.