Jesus Christ

The Second Mile

/ pastorpete51 / 4 Comments


And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Matthew 5:41 ESV

After the first mile that He traveled
He rested on the hay
Where Mary gently laid Him
At the ending of the day

As a carpenter of Nazareth
Ordinary like them all
No one knew that He was waiting
On His Holy Father’s call

To walk a second mile
Ending nothing like the first
Where nails and thorns would pierce Him
While soldiers did their worst

Till His suffering would finish
And friends laid Him in a cave
Not knowing His second mile would start
When He rose up from the grave!

The Second Mile by Peter Caligiuri
Copyright © 2025 All rights reserved



The Most Important Person in the Room

/ pastorpete51 / 3 Comments 
 But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.” 
Luke 10:40-42

This well-loved passage has many of us chuckling, as we consider ourselves a bit more like a Martha than a Mary. But our fondness for the story may cause us to miss the reason Luke included it. He alone could have recalled from firsthand experience as he accompanied Paul, how a life of service could be thrown off track by busyness. Martha was in many ways a lot like Paul. She loved Jesus with all her heart and didn’t care what anyone else thought about her faith. Remember it was Martha who invited Jesus over in the first place. Yet somewhere in the middle of her determination to serve Jesus, Martha began to lose focus. With her house filled with disciples, servants and even a few curious neighbors, she forgot that the whole occasion was supposed to be about Jesus. In the midst of our serving, sometimes you and I, like Martha, also forget who the most important person in the house is!

There are other times we get caught in the “service trap”, because of the expectations of others. As Pastor Rick Warren once famously said, “God loves you, and everyone else has a wonderful plan for your life!” We mean to take time for prayer and reading God’s word, but the phone rings, a text message grabs our attention, or we decide to check our Facebook page, just one more time. Little by little our day is eaten away by distractions, and the Holy Spirit’s voice is drowned out by the banging of our own pots and pans. With our hours consumed by serving, it is easy to miss out on taking time for the only one who really knows what we should do.

Last of all, while Martha asked for Jesus to pay attention to her needs and feelings, Mary just sat at HIs feet, with her eyes on Him. When we allow our serving to overwhelm us, we may elicit sympathy from others or even cause them to jump in to give us a hand, but we lose our chance to point to Jesus. But when, like Mary we give our complete attention to Him, then we can begin again to draw others to look to Him, because He is the most important person in the room!

Where is Jesus?

/ pastorpete51 / 1 Comment

Finally the temple guards went back to the chief priests and the Pharisees, who asked them, “Why didn’t you bring him in?” “No one ever spoke the way this man does,” the guards replied. John 7:45-46 NIV

Can you imagine the scene of today’s verse? Here was a squad of trained, professional soldiers, coming back from their assignment, which had been to arrest Jesus. But instead of bringing in the Rabbi they had been authorized to detain, they show up on the doorstep empty handed. “Where is Jesus?” their commanders asked. “Why are the handcuffs empty?”

“You don’t understand sir,: the captain of the detachment replies. “No one ever spoke like this man!” You see, it isn’t just during our worship time, that the things of earth can grow strangely dim. This little story tells us that when Jesus was seen for who He truly is, even His enemies weren’t sure what to do with Him. We may try to look away, but His eyes hold ours, His words penetrate our hearts and the power of His presence is more than we know how to deal with. Today it is two thousand years later, but people are still asking, “Just who is this Jesus?” The answer of our faith is that, He is the King of kings and the Lamb of God. He is the carpenter from Nazareth and the Word of God in human form. Jesus is the beginning and the end. He is the bright and morning star. Jesus is the Holy Son of the Living God and the Savior of the world. He humbly rode in on a donkey, but one day He will victoriously return on a white horse. Are you ready for all of who Jesus is? Am I? Why not turn our eyes upon Jesus this morning? Let’s look full in His wonderful face, before we go out to face the world, so that we will be empowered to report to others, “No one ever spoke like this man!” I pray you will be blessed by this simple version of the old hymn, along with the short message, from our Sunday service at Watermark.