One-Room School

Pick Me!

Luke 9:57-62

In school, my hand would shoot up to answer a question. “Pick me! Please pick me!” I was so eager to be chosen that I could hardly sit still in my chair. Eventually, the teacher would come and say gently, “I know you have the answer, but please give the other children a chance to answer.” Luke 9:57-60 is one such example:

As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”

He said to another man, “Follow me.”

But he replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”

Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”

“Pick me!” they seem to say, but when they are chosen, they are distracted by other responsibilities.

“Pick me!” The words tumble out of my mouth, but am I prepared to accept the work that is given to me? “Pick me!” I whine, when someone else is chosen first. “I can do it! Please pick me!” My lower lip trembles and I pout, “Why don’t you ever pick me?” Then one day the Teacher points at me and says,

“I am sending you out like sheep among wolves…Be on your guard; you will be handed over to the local councils and be flogged in the synagogues….But when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.”

When I see the Teacher pointing at me, my face flushes and my eyes widen. I am a deer in the headlights. “No!” I cry. “Don’t pick me! What you are asking of me is way too hard!”

Journal Thought: Am I only eager to follow until the Teacher turns to me and asks me to go? What excuse will I give for my reluctance to go?

Luke 9:57-60, NIV

Matthew 10:16-20, NIV