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Enjoy Life, Enjoy God


Dale Patterson

LEANER

July 22, 2010

In the game of Horseshoes, you score points by throwing the shoe around the stake, a "ringer," but if you are touching the stake, or just leaning up against it, that also has value, a "leaner."
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Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.)
- John 20:8,9 TNIV

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Jesus is dead, and had been placed in the tomb, but three days later his body is gone. What to make of it? We're told that they had yet to discern that resurrection had happened, so what did the disciple believe? Scholars have a field day with the question, but we don't have to get bogged down here. The disciple at the very least was a leaner. His mind had yet to grapple the full understanding of what the eyes of faith could see. He saw God at work; he believed it. What he saw was a good thing.

In a world of skeptics, and those who ridicule the eyes of faith, we are invited to be leaners. Belief is not blind, content-less believism, but neither is it having complete facts and understanding. It is inclining the heart and mind to trust that God is up to something good, something wonderful. The disciple did just that. He leaned into faith, and his faith proved justified. To be a disciple is at least to be a leaner.
Joyfully,

Dale Patterson