Grosey's Messages

While my parents affected to my brother and me, if I could have chosen the circumstances of my early life, I might have wanted them to be famous and wealthy. I might have chosen to be born into privilege and prosperity, with a father and mother who perhaps were deeply involved in God's work and raised me to know and love our Lord.

But we weren't. 

I might have wanted my mother  to be healthy and engaged with her grandchildren. But that could not be. 

I had the opportunity last week to meet with an old friend I hadn't seen or heard of in 50 years. 

I had thought his dad was a nuclear scientist (wasn't everyone who worked at ANSTO ?)

I had thought he had fixed out the HSC. That morning I told Lorelle and my grandkids he was the smartest most intelligent atheist I had ever met!  

The three hour conversation over lunch was an amazing revelation! 

No his dad was a fitter and turner.  No he had struggled with poverty as much as I had. No he had scored about 60% in his hsc (I had achieved 51%). He had enjoyed his Uni work that he fell into too much. His "chosen field" was because he had no hope of understanding chemistry or maths.  And he had no choice. He had worked in Thailand for a couple of Christian nongovernment aid organisations employed to do their statistics! He had married a wonderful wife from Warialda (you get extra points if you know where it is), whose parents had a house church in their home.  

He was surprised at our family secret of my mother's mental health issues.  I didn't realise until then how my family situation and upbringing had in God's purposes allowed me to do somethings other pastors would find traumatising.  

How insignificant was Jesus' hometown?

 Jesus was the only baby in human history to choose his parents, the place of his birth, and the persons who would attend his birth.

He could have been born in a Jerusalem palace to parents of cultural prestige and still come as the Jewish Messiah. He could have grown up in the Holy City and displayed his divine capacities to a national audience.

Instead, he chose a mother and adoptive father so impoverished that their offering at his birth was the one specified for the poor (Luke 2:24). He chose to be born in a cave where animals were kept and where his infant body would be laid in a stone feed trough. For his attendants, he chose field hands so ritually unclean that they could not enter a synagogue or the Temple. He grew up in a town so insignificant that it is not mentioned even once in the Old Testament and was a joke in its day (John 1:46).

He called followers who were not Pharisees and Sadducees but fishermen and tax collectors. He touched leprous limbs and dead bodies, befriended Samaritan sinners and Gentile demoniacs, and welcomed all who welcomed him.

Isa 9 reminds us 

Isaiah 9:1 ESV - But there will be no gloom for her who was in anguish. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he has made glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations.⁠

Isaiah 9:2,6 ESV

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone. [6] For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

"Christ's wounds are your healings"