This year, Karen and I have been reading “The Message” – a contemporary rendering of the Bible from the original languages – written by Eugene Peterson. Last night, we watched an episode of “The Chosen” portraying the birth, life and death of John the Baptist. Reflecting on the video re-enactment of Biblical stories prompted me to read the introduction to the gospel of Luke in “The Message.”

Here is Eugene Peterson’s introduction to the gospel of Luke: “Most of us, most of the time, feel left out – misfits. We don’t belong. Others seem to be so confident, so sure of themselves, ‘insiders’ who know the ropes, old hands in a club from which we are excluded.

One of the ways we have of responding to this is to form our own club, or join one that will have us. Here is at least one place where we are ‘in’ and the others ‘out.’ The clubs range from informal to formal in gatherings that are variously political, social, cultural, and economic. But the one thing they have in common is the principle of exclusion. Identity or worth is achieved by excluding all but the chosen. The terrible price we pay for keeping all those other people out so that we can savor the sweetness of being insiders is a reduction of reality, a shrinkage of life.

Nowhere is this price more terrible than when it is paid in the cause of religion. But religion has a long history of doing just that, of reducing the huge mysteries of God to the respectability of club rules, of shrinking the vast human community to a ‘membership.’ But with God there are no outsiders.

Luke is the most vigorous champion of the outsider. An outsider himself, the only Gentile in an all-Jewish cast of New Testament writers, he shows how Jesus includes those who typically were treated as outsiders by the religious establishment of the day: women, common laborers (sheepherders), the radically different (Samaritans), the poor. He will not countenance religion as a club. As Luke tells the story, all of us who have found ourselves on the outside looking in on life with no hope of gaining entrance (and who of us hasn’t felt it?) now find the doors wide open, found and welcomed by God in Jesus.”

If you feel like an outsider to the truths of God’s Word, you can ask God’s forgiveness for your sins and trust the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Saviour. He will welcome you with open arms into His family. If you are a Christian and are feeling like you aren’t close to God, remember that we are to walk by faith in God and His Word, not by our feelings.

Scripture for the weekend: “But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gracious gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 6:22-23 (NASB)

Thought for the weekend: “Along the way, every one of us will find ourselves in situations that shake us to the core – and cause us to think about the critical issues of life. But why wait until circumstances crush us? Now is the time to wake up and seek God’s help, wisdom, and direction.” – Stu Weber (from his book “The Heart of a Tender Warrior”)

Steve