Counted Worthy

What has following Jesus actually cost you this year, in money, in standing, or in a room going quiet when you walked into it?

Two people come to this verse from opposite directions, and it has something different to say to each.

The first has never paid anything and knows it. And they departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name. They had just been flogged. The sentence arrives as an accusation: everybody in the Bible suffers and you do not, so whatever you have must be counterfeit. Peter, who was in that room, later built a fence around exactly this. If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye. And then: But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evildoer, or as a busybody in other men's matters. He puts the busybody on the same list as the murderer. A good deal of what gets called persecution is the ordinary consequence of being tiresome.

The second reader is paying, and takes the verse as one more thing to fail at. Which is worth being exact about, because the gladness in that sentence is not enthusiasm about pain. The word carrying it is counted. Somebody had reckoned them as belonging to him, publicly, in a court, on the record, and the shame was the receipt.

The joy made them neither reckless nor dramatic. The next line is almost administrative. And daily in the temple, and in every house, they ceased not to teach and preach Jesus Christ. They were back at work in the morning.

The question, then, and take whichever half is honestly yours. If nothing has cost you anything, what would have to change about your week for that to start? And if it is costing you now, who told you that the joy was compulsory, and why did you believe them?

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 56 is Wholly Preserved (1 Thessalonians 5:23-24).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna, Year Two