PRACTICAL IDEALISM
Mark 10:46-52
Jesus was a practical idealist. He had ideals, high ideals, the highest. He insisted upon them. Yet at every turn he was so simply, warmly practical. He was in the hurting-grip of his purpose to go to the Cross, yet he stopped at the cry of need. The whole world was filling his vision, yet the plea of a despised beggar stopped him. Only the Jesus-touch makes practical idealists, with broad vision and practical touch.
LOVE AT CLIMAX
Mark 10:32-45
Jesus felt the Cross. He felt it long before he reached it. Its shadow stretched far ahead and wrapped him in its black, clinging folds. He shrank from it, though he never flinched. The thorns tore, and the nails cut his heart, long before his body was touched by them. The shame of it stung to the quivering quick. But love held him steady. If it only might grip us, how Jesus loved us!
GOD’S SIGNATURE
Leviticus 19:11-18
God’s signature of love and right is on every bit of true life. He is love. And love, as God lives it, is not a weak sentimentality of mere talk, but the most thoughtful, sane thing imaginable. It makes an exquisite blend of the practical and the ideal. It burns selfishness out. And getting selfishness out makes one thoughtful in a sane, practical way of everyone he touches, and about everything—and in his own daily life.
THE GOD STANDARD
Exodus 20:2-17
Man needs a standard. The yardstick protects the seller from giving too much, and the buyer from getting too little. The ten practical Sinai Words give us the true standard of life on both positive and negative sides —what belongs in and what out. They begin with God and take in our neighbors and ourselves. Putting God first makes the whole life ring true. By his help we can keep him first, and so keep true.
Colossians 1:9 For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding;
Think about these questions as you meditate on the verse. What does this verse teach me? How does this verse apply to my Life?
SHAPING THE CHILD
Mark 10:13-16; Matthew 18:1-6
Children and women were commonly despised when Jesus came. He revealed their true worth and place. We need the children as really as they need us. Before the hurt of sin has come to them they teach us purity and simplicity, trust and honesty. They absorb their surroundings. Children will be just what their elders are, whom they touch daily. It’s only as our lives are yielded wholly to Jesus’ control that our children can come into their rightful heritage.
