Did you ever get a product jingle or slogan stuck in your head, Dear Reader? Maybe it was McDonald’s “two all beef patties, special sauce…” or the Rice Krispey jingle. After having it float around in your head for sometimes years, did you realize how big of an impact it had on how you thought or responded to your place in space? (Okay, wait. Maybe those aren’t the best examples for this analogy, but you get the idea.)
I used to make my teachers a little crazy and a lot impatient with all my questions. Of course, the questions made perfect sense to me, and I was simply curious about the answer. Then, an American tabloid’s tagline became popular, “Enquiring minds want to know.” Outstanding! I finally had a rebuttal to disgruntled teachers.
Flash forward numerous decades, and what had become something of a mantra to me, was continuing to guide my thinking. I still had questions, but now it was my responsibility to find the answers. Along with being curious in general, I was especially curious about history.
Small wonder I spent part of my career in education teaching social studies. Not the boring stuff of memorizing copious dates to regurgitate onto a test, and then drift aimlessly away from student minds. I taught the way I learned, exploring beyond dates and locations to the causes and effects of history.
Okay, let’s take a right turn into the realm of empathy, into the emotions Jesus and His apostles may have felt during their earthbound journey together. Of course, we only have glimpses in Scripture. And to be truthful, much of this is pure speculation on my part. But . . .
What if we pan out from some of the pivotal, historical events surrounding Jesus’ ministry? What if we seek to understand the culture, what was going on in the world around Him and His apostles? What if we then zoom in on specific historical people, trying to see events from their perspectives? I’m almost embarassed to admit, Dear Reader, but this became like intellectual pot to me, curling tendrils of curiosity around my brain, being seduced by the vast (not necessarily accurate) information readily available via Internet.
Have you ever got sucked into a topic and wanted to go deeper, wanted to seek greater understanding?
And then I read a quote that became my anchor and my compass in writing “Running Toward the Danger:”
The people who sign up for a career of running toward danger don’t have the luxury of doing risk assessments for their lives or limbs or what their death might mean to their families. Even those who might have had those thoughts didn’t express them — that is simply not the stuff they are made of. They follow their duty and accept their fate.
David H. Schanzer: Those Who Run Towards Danger
Perhaps not surprising, this is an excerpt from an article written about first-responders, specifically the 911 responders. Curiosity, historical interest, empathy, and Schanzer’s poignant quote became uniquely woven into a framework of Jesus’ ministry for me. I began to see what we can easily, from millenia afterwards, glance past: deliberate acts of passion and compassion, of intentionally taking risks in speaking truth to power. I began to see that throughout His ministry, Jesus had deliberately been running toward the danger in order to procure my spiritual safety and hope in eternal life.
That’s the backstory of how “Running Toward the Danger” came to be. I hope you will join me as “Running Toward the Danger” journeys toward publication this November. More importantly, I hope my writing will strike a chord in you, forging a stronger, deeper relationship with Jesus.
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