Twenty children may be dancing on the stage during a recital, yet our eyes are focused on the one who happens to be our granddaughter. Is it because she’s the best dancer, or the smartest, or has the most winning personality? No, it’s because she “belongs” to us. Had she not been performing, we wouldn’t have been there in the first place.
When God looks upon the world, does he focus on certain “special ones” or does he just have a generic love for everyone?
Today we listen to a prayer of Jesus in which we note that there is selectivity in whom he prays for (John 17:1-11).
“I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for the ones you have given me, because they are yours, and everything of mine is yours and everything of yours is mine, and I have been glorified in them.”
Are we surprised that Jesus said he is not praying “for the world?” The handful of people whom God had chosen and given to Jesus were the ones whom Jesus prayed for at the Last Supper. These “gifts” were hand-picked by God to be disciples of Jesus. Since they belonged to the Father, they also belonged to Jesus. At that moment in history, though there were millions of people scattered across the earth, this little group of “Jesus people” were the ones that caught God’s attention. Jesus was glorified in them. They “glowed” with his presence.
“And now, I will no longer be in the world, but they are in the world, while I am coming to you.”
Jesus had done his “tour of duty” in a world that, for the most part, rejected him. He was now getting ready to return home to the Father. Meantime, those whom the Father had given him would remain in the world and carry out his mission to a new generation and to new people.
Earlier in the same passage Jesus prayed:
“Give glory to your son…so that your son may give eternal life to all you gave him.”
What made the disciples so special is that Jesus was about to give the gift of eternal life to them—the gift of the Holy Spirit. They would be born into a new identity as God’s chosen children on this earth. When God looks upon the earth his attention is first upon those who have the life of his Son within them. The disciples of Jesus glowed with the same eternal life that he shown in Jesus.
As we read this passage, we hope that in our day we are counted among those special “gifts” that God gives to Jesus. We hope that as God looks upon the stage of life, his eyes are drawn to us in a special way because he have Jesus living inside us. God , of course, loves everyone but not everyone has “eternal life” in them. It is his plan that the specially selected followers of Jesus will be agents of the “Good News”—so that many others will give their lives to Jesus and become part of God’s family on this earth.
Our road to Pentecost is nearing an end. We ask Jesus to invite us into the Upper Room with Mary and the Apostles to experience a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Nothing is more important than having the life of the Holy Spirit growing within us.
Come, Holy Spirit, come.
“I will ask the Father and he will give you another Advocate” (John 14:16).
