Thursday, June 25, 2015

Honesty

So this morning, I'm getting my stuff together a bit more this week and actually pulled out our Veggie Tale Devo book and this morning's devo was from Matthew 5:6 ICB.  The page was entitled Honesty.

"Those who want to do right more than anything else are happy.
    God will fully satisfy them."

It got me thinking, that it was maybe a little ironic that Matthew of all people was writing on Honesty. (Looking up the full verse, this verse was from something longer that Jesus said in the famous beatitudes sermon; I didn't recognize it in the ICB version), but none the less Matthew was retelling it.  

After Googling to verify that yes, this was the same Matthew that was the tax collector (still working on my Bible knowledge peeps! ;) ), I told Thing One and Thing Two that Jesus saw Matthew, who was likely NOT honest, as he was a despised tax collector (also learning this morning that he was actually Jewish too, Levi was his Jewish name, so this was a double whammy to the Jews. He taxed and likely cheated his own people.  He was a traitor too, working for the Pagan Roman government - ouch!)

Jesus saw in Matthew what no else likely did.  Frankly, I likely wouldn't have seen it either, especially if I were one of the ones he was cheating.  But Jesus called Matthew to be one of his special followers.

Yet another reminder we do not need to have ANY special qualities to be useful to God.  Phew.