Too Afraid to Change

I think we live in a pretty safe society, especially for those of us in Montana where I regularly leave my car unlocked.  It seems to be a source of pride, that though we know things have gone wrong, or could go wrong, we choose to act as if our house would never get broken into or our cars will never been stolen.  It’s not that bad things don’t happen to us – more, I think, that we pretend it won’t happen, or if it has, that it doesn’t exist.

That might have been the state of the people who were living in the vicinity of an absolute loon, who was so crazy that though they chained him, he could break through the chains.  He regularly ran around naked, hanging out primarily in the local graveyard.  Then Jesus showed up, and it turns out this guy was tormented by thousands of demons…

After Jesus gave permission to the demons to flee into 2000 pigs, which promptly ran off a cliff and drowned in the sea, the people came running to see what in the world was going on.  When they found the man they had known as insane, sitting at the feet of Jesus, fully dressed, and acting as if he’d never known a different way to act than normal, they didn’t want to have anything to do with Jesus.

They begged him to leave.

I find that I probably live my life like those people, eager to just have a normal life, ignoring the distraught situations around me, learning how to function with them, rather than allowing them to be dealt with.  I am afraid that if I asked Jesus to change those situations he might want to change me completely…

and I’m comfortable the way I am – aren’t you?

You see, though we’re not loony, though we’re not running around naked, frothing at the mouth, we’re all a little messed up – some of us just know how to control it better than others.

But what if we allowed Jesus to be that change, not only in other situations but our own – does that scare you like it scared them?  Like it scares me?