Fact: we have a God who doesn’t forget any of His children. The first reading says that is a cause for great joy that should make us shout! In this gospel passage, we see that regardless of the opinions of most people around him, Jesus responded to blind Bartimaeus calling out to Him because His purpose is always to heal and strengthen and liberate and protect. That’s what He does and who He is.
Jesus however, invites them to the way of descent, the way of service, of not expecting rewards because you are moved by the love to serve. In the Kingdom of God, the power concepts are radically changed to servanthood. This is something Jesus modelled with his life and death and invites them and everyone else to take up their crosses and follow him.
If, like me, you have ever done this, then together we’re guilty of the same kind of thinking which frustrated Jesus in the Gospel today. Jesus saw, and loved, the heart of a genuinely good guy – a young man who had done the right thing all his life – and saw how much he wanted more. However, the man walked away sad – heaven came with too high a price tag. This is when Jesus cracks it.
When two people come together in marriage, they are simply mirroring what is happening in the Divine flow, what God is. In marriage, a couple gives themselves to each other in a way they wouldn’t give themselves to any person in the universe. In doing so, they are physically expressing God’s love. As marriage is an expression of God’s love, it means that God ordains it for his purposes. Two people coming together in marriage is an expression of God bringing them together for his purposes.
As we know coming back from Ignite Conference or events like it isn’t always easy. We go back to the same situations, the same friends, and even the same mindset as to what we had before and it can feel like nothing has changed. But we know that God did something in our lives at Ignite Conference, so here are my top tips for coming back to everyday life after Ignite Conference.
There’s a lot of heat on the Church from secular society, and it makes it easier to create an “us” and “them” mentality. But there is no ‘us and them’. Not in Jesus’ mind. For Jesus actually made every single “us” and every single “them”. We’re special, but so are they. They just don’t know it as well as we might. And what a crying shame that is!
In the Gospel today the disciples were arguing about whom was the best out of them. It can be really easy to be critical of this as a modern reader but conversely think about the last time you had a harsh and critical thought about a friend, co-worker or family member. We can be susceptible to comparing ourselves to those around us, and not always in trying to learn from the positive example they might be setting.
It has been a personal privilege to have been part of the team organising Ignite Conference for the last 20 years. Over this time, we have witnessed thousands of young people (and not as young!) encounter Jesus Christ as someone real and present today and experience the Holy Spirit in a tangible way in their lives.
