“Read the red words.”

I have a friend who says this and I love it.  Four simple words to welcome me back to finding love in God’s Word, and I found it again this morning.

Taking love as my preface to reading the Word, I randomly walked this morning into Matthew 9:35-38 and was welcomed with reminders of Jesus’ very real and alive faith with works.  He was teaching, preaching, and healing – just doing what He does, and then stops and looks at all the multitudes around him, and: He was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd.

This is where it gets real for me, this business of wanting to get to know Christ and wanting what He has; its when I read these words: He was moved with compassion for them.

And here: because they were weary and scattered.

This is the “feeling Christ” I’ve come to know, and trust, and love; the compassionate and doing-good-works man of God on earth loving the lost.

My heart softens and melts.  I can not always identify with the supreme faith of Christ that made it possible for his many works of faith – the ones that profoundly and permanently changed the lives of those around him, but I can always, always identify with the feelings.  And with these, Jesus then turns to the able and says: the harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few.  My respect swells even more when I read the next description of what He did; He told them (and us) to: pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.

He didn’t say, “This is my harvest, my work; here, I’ll do it all”.  He didn’t say, “This is your work, yours; go figure it out on your own”.  And he didn’t condemn the lost or quilt others into doing what needed to be done.  With the compassion that was put onto his heart He saw the harvest, claimed it to be of God, then asked Him for the means to care for God’s harvest.

These words become teachings for me and fit well with my looking into what harvest I see God calling me to do; with loving reminders that all of my works need to be guided by the compassionate heart of Christ and claimed with God as my Employer.