Lisa's Log: I Have a Super Power (John 10:28-29)

This is going to be a different kind of blog post.

As some of you know, I like to spend my morning hours with my nose in my Greek Bible, trying to expand my skills in translating from Greek to English.

Every now and then I come across something that sticks out to me and I get an epiphany, and then I can't get it out of my mind. I have been thinking about John 10:28-29 for a really long time now, and I just want to share this and get it off my chest.

Here is the text in Greek:

So, translated in English, it says pretty much the same, so there's no revelation here of anything different than what your Bible says. It means the same thing in Greek as it does in English. But a lot of time when I am translating a verse word for word, I am focusing on one word at a time, which makes me think about each word and its meaning individually. You know how you can see the same thing over and and over and over again a million times, and you don't really think about it? I have read this verse a million times, and didn't really stop to think about it, until I examined each word one at a time.

I am focusing on the word "snatch" in both of these verses.

In the context, Jesus is talking about his sheep (He is our Shepherd, you know!) Anyone who follows Him would be His sheep. And He knows who His sheep are, and He keeps them in his hand.

And no one can snatch His sheep out of His hand.

The word for snatch in the Greek means to snatch, seize, or take away by force.

I envision Jesus keeping us all in His hand, not in a closed fist, but in an open hand.

Nothing can take us by force against our will out of His hand.

And that is what has me so intrigued!

The verse doesn't say His hand is open, but this is way I like to envision this scene. Imagine finding a cricket and putting it in your hand. If you close your hand and make a fist, you are not letting it go. You are keeping it prisoner, and taking away it's free will to leave.

Now open up your hand and let it decide what it wants to do.

Will it stay in your hand? or will it jump out?

Will you let it decide for itself?

I guarantee you, it will jump out, but that is beside my point.

My point is, that when we follow Christ, he keeps us in His hand, but He also gives us free will. And this is where our super power comes in.

Did you know that your will is the only thing that will allow you to leave His hand? No one can force us to jump out of His hand. Some people are tempted to jump out, and they do, which is both foolish and sad, (why would anyone want to leave the protection of His hand where nothing can "get" you?) but in every case, it is their decision to jump out. They are not snatched out, or taken out by force, they jump out according to their own will.

Romans 8:38-39 says that nothing, NOTHING! can separate us from the love of God, but from what I gather from to John 10:28-29 there is one thing that can separate us from God. Our own will.

He gave us our own free will, but He has a will too.

It is His will that we stay in His hand, but He doesn't keep us in a tight fist. He gives us a way out if we want it.

So it comes down to our will against His.

Of course we are not stronger than God, but think about it! Our will has enough power to break all the barriers and separate us from God, even though Romans 8 says nothing can separate us. Our will is the only thing that can separate us! And that, to me, is mind boggling.

If He wanted to keep us in a closed fist, we would be prisoners with no will of our own. But He wants us to choose to stay in His hand.

And as someone put it so well in a sermon I heard - He loves us so much, that He gave us the freedom to choose to be with Him, or apart from Him. It is our own choice - no one can force us either way. If we choose to be separated from Him for eternity, He will let us do that - over His dead body. Literally.

If we want Him to let us go, He will let us go. Out there where there's no protection. Out there where we can be snatched by the bogeyman.
That is a sad and scary thought.

Our whole lifetime is a battle between our will against His, and He will always let us have our own way, but is that really what we want?

So anyhoo, I hope this didn't sound like a sermon. I didn't mean for it to be that way. It's just something that's been on my mind for a long time.

I have another thought I'd like to post about soon too, but that's for another day.

Here are a few other things I've been up to:

A lady from church does this charity thing every year where she sends boxes out to needy kids in poor third-world countries. She needed someone to sew some pencil pouches. I never made pencil pouches before, so I told her I would learn how to make them. She needed 20 pouches, and I managed to pump out 24 of them. The first one took me 2 hours to make cuz I never made one before and had to learn how to do it, but by the time I was done making them, it only took me about half an hour for each one. Anyhoo, now that I know how to make them, I might make a few just for fun. They are fun and easy to make, and it's a good way to use up some scraps!

And now that I'm done making those, I am getting busy with my Christmas cards. I want to get them done early this year because

I AM GOING TO ALASKA FOR CHRISTMAS! YAYAYAYAYAYA!!!!

So I want to get my cards sent out before I leave.

Did you all have a good Halloween?

My Halloween festivities were scaled down quite a bit from what I normally do, but I am planning to get back into it next year. We even already asked a couple people over to be our next "victims".

BWAAAHHAHAHAAAA!

I know this picture is blurry, I don't know why it's blurry, but for some reason I didn't get a clear picture of our jack-o-lanterns. Me and Chuck both carved one this year.

Too bad we don't have any moose around here to eat them for us.

I wanted to deck out the whole front porch, but since I wasn't doing the restaurant this year, I didn't have a whole lot of decor ready at my convenience, and I didn't wanna go up and down the stairs digging stuff out, just to put it all back again after one short day. So this is all I did: