It's Thursday, so I'm quitting throwing rocks.
I've been sitting on and thinking about this post for a while; mostly because I'm a hipster and don't want this to seem like a New Year's resolution when in reality this is just poor timing. New Year's resolutions are a little cliche for my liking. There, I said it. I'm all for dreaming, goal setting, and improving yourself, but I'm too angsty to do it when everyone else is. I'm weird, I know.
If you know anything about me you know that I am a big Bob Goff fan, and if you know anything about him he proposes that every Thursday we quit something. You can quit your job, relationship, a habit, anything. But every week the goal is to prune our lives to look more like Jesus a little bit at a time. This isn't some rigid rule, but it's kind of fun to really think about every week. I try to quit something every Thursday - partially because I like the spontaneity of it all. Two weeks ago, I decided to quit throwing rocks; let me explain.
Earlier this month I got to head out to one of my very favorite places in the world: Washington Family Ranch. It was essentially a giant family reunion. The speaker was a friend of mine and a theology professor at Whitworth University named Kent McDonald. He's honestly one of my favorite guys to listen to talk about Jesus.
On the last night, he was telling a story from the book of John in chapter 8 in the Bible. It was the story of a woman caught in adultery. This story is one of my favorite places to see Jesus' heart for people and it keeps coming up in my life recently from all different perspectives. I'll tell you the story real quick just in case you've never heard it:
So Jesus is hanging out at a temple when a bunch of pharisees, who were the priests at this time, start gathering around him and they throw a (probably) naked woman in front of both Jesus and the crowd they've created.
Pause, because I know what you're thinking, "why is she naked?!" She's naked because this poor girl was literally caught in the act of adultery. In the act of having sex. How horrific. (Side Note: If you're like me, you're also wondering where the dude is? But that's a whole other conversation)
Back to the story, the woman is now standing in front of Jesus and freaking out, naturally. When the pharisees start saying to Jesus, "Teacher, Teacher! What do we do with this woman? Moses' law says to stone her, but what do You say?" At this point they've got the stones in their hands ready to go, trying to trap Jesus into breaking the law. Jesus, being ten times smarter, bends down and starts writing in the sand.
Pause again, because this is important. We have no idea what the heck Jesus was writing. Doesn't that drive you insane!? Some theologians have theorized that He's writing down the men in the crowd's sins, but we'll never know I guess. I like to think that's what He was doing though, along with taking some of the eyes off of the poor, naked girl standing there waiting to hear if she's going to be killed.
Un-pause. After He's done writing He stands up and says arguably one of the most underrated and important lines in the Bible, "alright, whoever is sinless among you, go ahead, throw the first rock" and then He stoops back down and starts writing again. The men, it says oldest first, start dropping their stones and walking away. After they're all gone it's just Jesus and the girl left. He stands up and looks at her and asks if anyone threw their rock. She told Him no and He said, "well, neither do I, go and try not to sin anymore" Whoa. Game changer. The one guy who could have judged her DIDN'T.
I've always related most to the woman in this story doing things I know I shouldn't be doing and having Jesus meet me with His grace upon grace that changes my heart. But this time Kent's message put me in the place of the men holding their stones rearing to go.
He asked, "Who or what do you throw rocks at in your life? Gays? Muslims? Refugees? Democrats? Republicans? Other religions? .... Yourself?" And I sat up a little straighter. I throw rocks, and man I'm good at it. Too good at it for someone who claims to be a Jesus follower. I throw rocks at people I disagree with, mostly. When the Lord tells me to love them fervently. My rocks, however, look a lot more like cynicism. I pick on things and people, and the scary part is sometimes it's disguised as coming from a good place. More so than that, though, I throw rocks at myself. I am a passionate person, I want to be good at things immediately. So I am hard on myself, harder than I should be. I tend to think I'm not good at anything, worthless, and dumb. Those rocks hurt.
Before we walked in to Kent's message that night we were told to get our own rocks, and hold onto them for club. After Kent's message he told us, if we're ready, to come drop our rocks on the stage. I held onto mine for a little bit as others headed up to the stage, I thought and I prayed about what exactly that meant for me; and my blood started pumping a little faster. I realized I needed to get rid of it. If my Savior who knit me together, who calls me "beloved", who I am trying to be like tells me to drop it I need to, and so I did. But before I did, I took this picture:
I know it's a process, I know it's not something that was fixed that night just by dropping the rock on the stage one time, but gosh do I want to continually drop my rocks in life every single day. Don't you?
xoxo
B
If you know anything about me you know that I am a big Bob Goff fan, and if you know anything about him he proposes that every Thursday we quit something. You can quit your job, relationship, a habit, anything. But every week the goal is to prune our lives to look more like Jesus a little bit at a time. This isn't some rigid rule, but it's kind of fun to really think about every week. I try to quit something every Thursday - partially because I like the spontaneity of it all. Two weeks ago, I decided to quit throwing rocks; let me explain.
Earlier this month I got to head out to one of my very favorite places in the world: Washington Family Ranch. It was essentially a giant family reunion. The speaker was a friend of mine and a theology professor at Whitworth University named Kent McDonald. He's honestly one of my favorite guys to listen to talk about Jesus.
On the last night, he was telling a story from the book of John in chapter 8 in the Bible. It was the story of a woman caught in adultery. This story is one of my favorite places to see Jesus' heart for people and it keeps coming up in my life recently from all different perspectives. I'll tell you the story real quick just in case you've never heard it:
So Jesus is hanging out at a temple when a bunch of pharisees, who were the priests at this time, start gathering around him and they throw a (probably) naked woman in front of both Jesus and the crowd they've created.
Pause, because I know what you're thinking, "why is she naked?!" She's naked because this poor girl was literally caught in the act of adultery. In the act of having sex. How horrific. (Side Note: If you're like me, you're also wondering where the dude is? But that's a whole other conversation)
Back to the story, the woman is now standing in front of Jesus and freaking out, naturally. When the pharisees start saying to Jesus, "Teacher, Teacher! What do we do with this woman? Moses' law says to stone her, but what do You say?" At this point they've got the stones in their hands ready to go, trying to trap Jesus into breaking the law. Jesus, being ten times smarter, bends down and starts writing in the sand.
Pause again, because this is important. We have no idea what the heck Jesus was writing. Doesn't that drive you insane!? Some theologians have theorized that He's writing down the men in the crowd's sins, but we'll never know I guess. I like to think that's what He was doing though, along with taking some of the eyes off of the poor, naked girl standing there waiting to hear if she's going to be killed.
Un-pause. After He's done writing He stands up and says arguably one of the most underrated and important lines in the Bible, "alright, whoever is sinless among you, go ahead, throw the first rock" and then He stoops back down and starts writing again. The men, it says oldest first, start dropping their stones and walking away. After they're all gone it's just Jesus and the girl left. He stands up and looks at her and asks if anyone threw their rock. She told Him no and He said, "well, neither do I, go and try not to sin anymore" Whoa. Game changer. The one guy who could have judged her DIDN'T.
I've always related most to the woman in this story doing things I know I shouldn't be doing and having Jesus meet me with His grace upon grace that changes my heart. But this time Kent's message put me in the place of the men holding their stones rearing to go.
He asked, "Who or what do you throw rocks at in your life? Gays? Muslims? Refugees? Democrats? Republicans? Other religions? .... Yourself?" And I sat up a little straighter. I throw rocks, and man I'm good at it. Too good at it for someone who claims to be a Jesus follower. I throw rocks at people I disagree with, mostly. When the Lord tells me to love them fervently. My rocks, however, look a lot more like cynicism. I pick on things and people, and the scary part is sometimes it's disguised as coming from a good place. More so than that, though, I throw rocks at myself. I am a passionate person, I want to be good at things immediately. So I am hard on myself, harder than I should be. I tend to think I'm not good at anything, worthless, and dumb. Those rocks hurt.
Before we walked in to Kent's message that night we were told to get our own rocks, and hold onto them for club. After Kent's message he told us, if we're ready, to come drop our rocks on the stage. I held onto mine for a little bit as others headed up to the stage, I thought and I prayed about what exactly that meant for me; and my blood started pumping a little faster. I realized I needed to get rid of it. If my Savior who knit me together, who calls me "beloved", who I am trying to be like tells me to drop it I need to, and so I did. But before I did, I took this picture:
xoxo
B
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