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What would you ask Jesus, if you could sit down and have coffee with Him?

I love questions like that, questions that make us think critically. Somebody recently asked me that question, except I changed the future tense to make it bit less futuristic. The question was originally, “When you see Jesus, what will you ask Him?”

I’m kind of impatient, like I’m not going to wait until I’m dead to start asking Jesus questions. Also, if I don’t actually get to know Jesus NOW, while I’m still living, how am I supposed to recognize Him later? You don’t want to go into the after life and sit down to coffee with just anybody. Just saying.

But that said, I liked the question very much. Also, I had no answer. For the life of me, I could not think of a single question, because I’ve already asked Him, and He’s already answered me. No, I don’t have all the answers, I simply have the answers to the things that have troubled me personally, in just the perfect amount that my brain  and heart can handle.

I’ve been sitting down and having coffee with Jesus for a long time now and asking some rather impertinent questions. If I were Him, I would roll my eyes when He saw me coming. I would think, Oh great, here comes that crazy woman again, demanding to know why I prefer sheep to goats. That is so NOT our Lord and Savior, however.  You know what He always says? I’m so glad you’ve come to me. Now what troubles you? Why are you restless?

Ask Him your questions.

I have come to Him in hysterics, in the midst of some real emotional trauma, and asked some hard questions like, “How come the good always seem to die young and the really rotten people live forever?” Or, “Why did you intervene in this suffering and not in the other?” Or, “Why is this injustice prevailing and how am I supposed to reconcile that with a loving God?”

Truthfully however, the last question I asked Him was a much lighter one. I’ve never been comfortable with His metaphors about sheep and goats in the bible. I don’t like earthly sheep at all. I don’t like wool, mutton, or their little pointy noses. I adore goats however. My husband once asked me what I would do without him and I promptly answered, “become a goat lady.” He wasn’t real thrilled by the speediness of my answer.

So every time I think of sheep, I groan, which is obviously problematic since our Lord is a Shepherd and we are His sheep. Also, He will come and separate the sheep from the goats, and the goats will not be going with Him, which I find terribly unfair. I would much prefer to self-identify as a goat and I think all of us goats should  follow Him and just leave the sheep behind.

Anybody remember “goat’s head soup,” the Grateful Dead, or the many satanic cultural references to goats?  That’s not God, that’s the world. Stop the goat-hate, people.

Okay, so it’s a silly question and a bit frivolous, but there was some disquiet in my spirit over this goat matter and so I simply asked. I asked with all the reverence and admiration one might ask a Great Artist about His work, to give Him honor and glory, to come into closer understanding with Him. To get to know Him better.

I asked for some revelation and sure enough, I’ve been getting the answers I was looking for ever since, with some rather comical references to goats thrown in for good measure. And also, right on schedule, our Pastor at church today decided to address that very thing, the sheep and goats. He did a beautiful job, too.

First off, separating the goats from the sheep is a farming analogy, a metaphor in scripture, and I could give you a literal and historical answer for why it is such an apt analogy, sure to be well understood at the time. My question however, was far more emotional and spiritual, more like, “Lord, what do you have against goats?”

Nothing, He’s got nothing against goats. He’s quite delighted I like them.

Our pastor in church said, “sheep eat grass and goats eat everything,” and then the Lord cut him right off and whispered to me, “Do you understand now?” And I did. I grasped a far deeper meaning in there. Goats eat everything.

The reason why some of us like goats so much is because they eat everything. They can clear a field of blackberries. They are wonderful landscapers, eating all the weeds, and pooping out almost sterile fertilizer. What makes them so remarkable however, is that they actually digest the seed. They tend to kill it, literally. It’s a talent rather unique to goats, because most animals will eat the grass, and poop out the seeds in these new, heavily fortified, now perfectly fertilized “weed packets.” Goats like to feed up high, bushes and shrubs, right where the seeds often live.

You can send goats into an overgrown field of weeds a few times and they will not only clear it, they’ll kill the seed and prevent new growth. A shepherd protects the sheep from the environment around them, but a goat herder actually protects the environment from the goats.

It’s a rather disconcerting revelation in a spiritual context, but you will all be happy to know that now, “all is well with my soul” on this goat matter. Everytime the Lord reveals something to me, I gain another layer of trust too, and trust in kind of important in building relationships.

So, “What would you ask Jesus, if you could sit down and have coffee with Him?” I encourage everyone to do just that, to seek a relationship and the answers you need, but I am also curious about what kind questions other people might have or once had?

So, spill the beans, lay it on me, tell me what questions you may have had.

 

coffee