Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Devotion 2.4.15

Was Johnny Manziel's timing for going into rehab accidental or on purpose?  "Let's do it the day after the Super Bowl and minimize coverage on this," I can hear a publicist saying.  Sunday night, after THE play of the Super Bowl, I imagine a phone call that went something like this, "Kid, we gotta do this now."  TV coverage on Monday was like this:  Could you believe the call?  What was Pete Carroll thinking when he sent in a pass play? And what about those commercials?  Really, probably the worst commercials ever. And oh, by the way, Johnny Manziel checked into rehab.

Johnny is his own worst enemy, but when this was reported, I thought, "I hope this works out for him."  Sadly, we see people all around us with demons.  They haunt them and torment them and consume them.  Unfortunately, we sit in judgment all too often with people, either those in fame or not so famous, yet we are all susceptible to these whether or not we want to believe it. 

Christ comes across a man literally with a demon in the book of Mark.  "What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?  Have you come to destroy us?  I know who you are - the Holy One of God."
Interesting that Christ hasn't revealed himself, but demons know who he is.  Christ notes the man and orders the demon out of him.  The man convulsed and the demon came out.  (Mark 1:24 - 26 which provides us ultimately the irony that the demons knew this was the Christ more so than the religious leaders of the day)

So with our celebrities (and others), we speak of "demons" in a figurative way.  In this passage, Christ confronts the demon.  All of this reminds us of the fragile nature of life.  Despite what we may see as our strengths, the vulnerability is there.  We pray for those who have problems.  We pray that they find ways to come to grips with their problems and learn to cope with them.  We also pray that they make Christ a central theme in their recovery and that we keep him as a central theme in our lives.

Hope Men's Ministry

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