Matthew 13:16-17

Matthew 13:16-17

But your eyes are blessed because they see.  And your ears are blessed because you hear.  For amen I say to you all that many prophets and righteous ones longed to see what you all see – and they did not see – and to hear what you hear – and they did not hear.

Thoughts for Today

First Thought:

Jesus tells His disciples just how precious their situation is.  They actually got to walk with the Son of God.  They got to hear perfect love, perfect righteousness, perfect correction, and perfect teaching.  Of course, the same could be said for the people who rejected Jesus while He lived on earth.  So certainly not everyone saw and believed.  But Jesus’ disciples did.  They got to experience it all first-hand.

Have you ever wished you were there among Jesus’ disciples?  What about that opportunity might you relish?  Can you understand why they were blessed?

Second Thought:

That same blessing applies to us.  In fact, some might say that we are even more blessed.  We not only get to hear Jesus’ teaching, but we get to hear it all in the perspective of knowing the end result: the resurrection.  We get to have the witness of Paul and all of Jesus’ disciples who were beaten and abused for their faith.  We get to have their faithful witness added to Jesus’ perfect teaching.  We may not walk hand in hand with Jesus in a physical sense, but we get to live completely with an awesome perspective of what exactly God was doing and is willing to do.

Do you feel as blessed as Jesus’ own disciples?  Do you feel blessed in that you get the opportunity to live after the story has been told and fully revealed?

Third Thought:

Then we get to a very humbling realization.  The disciples were blessed because they got to live with Jesus.  We are blessed because we have the perspective of the end of the story.  But there were scores of people who lived before Christ.  There were scores of people for whom just the promise of Christ was enough.  Now that’s faith.  Those are people worth holding in high regard.  Those are people who reveal to us what living in the hope of a promise looks like.  As we look towards eternal life with God, the prophets and righteous people who lived before Christ can show us what such a life looks like lived in hope. 

Do you live in hope?  Do you know others who live in hope?  How can you look to the prophets and righteous people of old for inspiration?

Passage for Tomorrow: Matthew 13:18-23