⁵⁷ As they were walking along, someone said to Jesus, “I will follow you wherever you go.”

⁵⁸ But Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens to live in, and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place even to lay his head.”

⁵⁹ He said to another person, “Come, follow me.”

The man agreed, but he said, “Lord, first let me return home and bury my father.”

⁶⁰ But Jesus told him, “Let the spiritually dead bury their own dead! Your duty is to go and preach about the Kingdom of God.”

⁶¹ Another said, “Yes, Lord, I will follow you, but first let me say good-bye to my family.”

⁶² But Jesus told him, “Anyone who puts a hand to the plow and then looks back is not fit for the Kingdom of God.”

Luke 9:57-62

Dear God, Luke is painting an interesting picture of Jesus. He is going out of his way to show us that Jesus wasn’t just building a movement driven by crowd size. He wasn’t looking for strength in numbers. He wasn’t looking for majority rule or power. He was seemingly trying to capture the whole heart of those who wanted to follow him. I’ll confess that I really don’t understand the last two except that maybe you knew something about their situations that seemed to make these excuses and not legitimate requests. I mean, you chastised the Pharisees at one point for keeping people from caring for their parents (Mark 7:9-13).

There were several times when it seems like you/Jesus were intentionally thinning the herd of who was following you. You were not only intentionally making the gate narrower, but you were then adding a filter to the gate to limit those who could go in. I think you were raising the standard and saying, “I want quality over quantity. I want people who are all in with me.”

Father, I am as all-in with you as I know to be. But you know my heart is heavy about some work challenges this morning. This isn’t necessarily going along with this passage, but I need your help this morning. I need you to speak to me, Holy Spirit. I need your guidance. I need your wisdom. I need to somehow maneuver through this situation in a loving, constructive way where everyone wins. But I don’t know how to do it on my own. I need you. I need divine inspiration. Oh, and let me stop and thank you for something that I think I took for granted last night. I was at an event where someone said some very nice things about me and the work that I do to a group of people, and they told me later that they just felt inspired by you to say them publicly. So maybe I should actually believe her, believe you were encouraging me last night even though I didn’t have ears to hear it, and now as I sit here and try to lean into you, you are reminding me of it and just asking me to lean into you more. So I trust you, Lord. I trust you, my Triune God. Thank you for being in my life.

I pray this in Jesus and with your Holy Spirit,

Amen