Fight the Good Fight

        When life has you painted into a corner, how do you respond? What weapons do you use? Do you come out swinging...flailing and fighting to defend yourself? Or perhaps you run as fast as your heart will take you...trying desperately to separate yourself from the emotional chaos of it all. 

      We often respond to life's difficulties with earthly weapons of self-defense. 

     The sword was what Jesus' disciples chose when they were confronted by the soldiers and crowd who came to arrest their Friend and Leader. Quickly and impulsively Peter cut off the ear of Malchus, the servant of the Jewish high priest. Peter's response to difficulty was instinctive and swift...and perhaps not so unlike how we often react when someone accuses, threatens, or criticizes us or someone we love. 

    But this Holy Week, Jesus shows us a radically different way...with transforming weapons of power unlike any we might have chosen on our own. 

"But Jesus answered, 'No more of this!' And He touched the man's ear and healed him."~Luke 22:51

    In one of the final acts of His earthly ministry with His disciples, Jesus teaches them (and us), a crucial lesson. When the "battle" was at a critical point, when Jesus could have used all of Heaven's power to destroy those who came with evil intent...He uses the divine instead of the deadly, the poignant instead of the poison and from His quiver of defense, He pulls these weapons:
1) THE WEAPON OF TRUST in the Father's plan to be best, even if it meant suffering and difficulty.
2) THE WEAPON OF PRAYER. Jesus had just spent the previous hours in communion with the Father, being strengthened through prayer. 
3) THE WEAPON OF LOVE. This is the most powerful of all...this is the heart of what motivated His entire life, death and resurrection. It was this love for you and me that brought Him to that night in the Garden and ultimately to the Cross. With His holy hands and heart He wielded the "weapon" that not only healed one man's ear... 

but restored the brokenness of all humanity.

May we fight the good fight in the same way as Christ...with trust, prayer and love.