Day: 89 Verses Memorized: 223 Working On: John 6:1-15
The John Squad
(Please click here to chart your own progress!)
My Progress:
Things are moving along quite well. I'm memorizing the passage about the feeding of the 5,000. It's not that difficult to learn and I'm picking it up fast. However, I'm disappointed with the amount of time I've been able to spend on it. This week is VBS at church, so I've either been working on that or feeling wiped out from it. But I still spend a few moments a day reviewing and while it is going slowly, I am still making progress.
I'm a little disappointed at my lack of retention of previous chapters. I'm not sure how to hang onto the older chapters while I work on the new ones. I have to be honest, there have been a few moments where I have heard the voice in my head say, "give up, Heidi. This is pointless. You're forgetting it all anyway so why continue?" I quickly try to ignore that voice and consciously choose to pursue my goal and not buy into that lie. But those nagging, negative thoughts are beginning to creep in more and more often.
Some Thoughts:
I never knew that the loaves of bread were barley, and that was the cheapest type of bread. It's almost like the water into wine - the simplest, most inexpensive material being turned into an overwhelming surplus of the best. That's Jesus for you!
I love Jesus in this passage. (Well, I love Him all the time, but He makes me smile extra in this particular passage.) I love how Jesus asks Philip where they're going to buy bread for everyone and in the next verse says "he asked this only to test him, for he already had in mind what he was going to do." I just think that's funny. I wonder what Jesus was thinking when He asked Philip. I like how the disciples scramble around trying to figure out the logistics of feeding the people in their human minds.
I love how Jesus is orderly and organized. (I am a rather organized person myself and thrive when things are neat and in their place. I also fall back on "God is a God of order" whenever I feel like my organization goes slightly overboard.) I like how Jesus got everyone seated and had a planned system for distributing the food. He just seems so calm and collected and doesn't let the enormity of the situation fluster or stress Him.
So the past few weeks, I've been annoyed with the Jews and Pharisees for persecuting Him. Now, I'm starting to get annoyed at the people following Him too. I guess I always thought that even though He was persecuted, He always had such a huge following of believers as well. But as I'm reading through various commentaries, I'm beginning to realize that a great majority of His "followers" were merely thrill-seekers looking for shows and miracles. They did not understand who He was, His message, or why He was there. They weren't following Him to hear from God, they were following Him because He was interesting. That's disappointing to learn.
I wonder where I would have been if Jesus had come to my town back then. Would I be following Him because I was seeking God? Would I be following Him to watch Him do some cool stuff? As I reflect on those questions, I sadly realize that I would be the one back in Chapter 5 at that stinking pool of Bethesda...
