Trading Spaces

If you could be anyone else for a day who would you be? A simple and a fun question to ponder. On different days we might trade skin or bank accounts or houses or jobs or wives with a number of different people. On our really good days we might not wish to trade with anyone. On other days…like when you have a really horrible fight with your wife…or when you get publicly humiliated… we would trade with just about anyone. Maybe that is where Halloween came from.

I tend to think about that a lot... that is... about what other people have and what I don’t have. So when I listened to Rob Bell’s message “What is it to you?” last Thursday, I had to catch my breath afterwards, it hit home that much. In his funny, somewhat sarcastic, narrative style he drove home the problem with the tendency we have to envy our neighbors or covet their lives. He basically unpacked John 21:19-21…

After he said this, Jesus told Peter, "Follow me." 20 Peter turned around and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them… 21 So when Peter saw him, he asked Jesus, "Lord, what about him?"

The title of the message comes from Jesus response in verse 22, where he responds “What is that to you?” It seems that even Peter was at times more worried about God’s plan for someone else than what God had in store for him. I can just imagine when I’m looking at someone’s life and I’m thinking, God what does he have that I don’t….Jesus saying to me “What is it to you?” For me it’s a wake-up call to turn my eyes back on my rabbi, Jesus, to be more like him and in that pursuit I will be more comfortable in my own skin.

We all covet something different. For the single folks its having a spouse. For the kidless folks its having a kid. For the overworked and underpaid its having a better paycheck. For the disenfranchised its power. For the street-smart its book-smarts. It's that tendency to think, boy God what I could do for you if I had what that guy/girl/church had.

If you need to hear Jesus say to you “What is it to you” when you look at others let me introduce you to Rob Bell. To hear this message search Rob Bell on iTunes podcasts and listen to “What is it to you?” (9/3/2006) or download that message here. Rob Bell is downloaded 50,000 times a week and his Nooma films have a cult following.