Meeting Jesus

Common People... Uncommon Stories

Donald Blosser

• Publisher: Donald Blosser Publishing
• Year: 2023
• eBook ISBN: 9781961507005
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Bibbie

Meeting Jesus, Common People, Uncommon Stories is the result of a pastoralexperience linked with cultural Biblical knowledge. The book was really written for one person, thus it is a very personal endeavor. Maggie LIechty was an elderly woman who was housebound because of health issues. Regular pastoral visits grew to include serious faith conversations about Biblical persons whose lives were changed by their encounter with Jesus. Maggie was not about to accept simple, easy answers. These were real people struggling with real issues that complicated their lives. Maggie felt with them because of her own situation and she wanted to know more these persons and what their life was like before meeting Jesus. She felt that these persons were important and they deserved more than the brief encounter recorded in scripture. For her, they were persons struggling with a life that was not of their own doing.

These persons became the focus of our weekly pastoral visits as Maggie regularly identified with these persons, and celebrated their new life with her own limited social contacts. She regularly insisted on seeing Jesus as a very sensitive, caring person who empathized with the Biblical persons. She constantly noted how Jesus accepted persons and dignified them by stopping to talk with them and rather than pass them by as many people did with her. She saw Jesus injecting hope into a situation where despair was more likely.

In the process of these visits I discovered a more human compassionate Jesuswhose presence impacted people in very positive ways. Maggie often insisted that the church should offering the same contact, the same belief that these persons had value, and that their healing often happened because of the acceptance of the faith community.. She believed that healing happens within the faith community even when the literal physical situation remains the same. Jesus worked at community acceptance and the social inclusion that changed how persons were seen and how a special kind of healing made life so much better for these persons.

In the process of these sharing these stories, Maggie helped me to discover places where healing was thwarted because the faith community refused tosee them as whole persons using their physical condition as a reason to exclude them from full participation in the faith community.

In the process of sharing with Maggie and writing these stories I began to see Jesus and the meaning of Christian Faith differently. I discovered amore compassionate Jesus wose simple presence spoke to the situation of each individual giving them dignity and hope. By her simple, yet veryprofound experience of God's presence in Jesus, I began to also see persons today with new empathy and healing acceptance.

I would also be honest in acknowledging that this new acceptance and open inclusion my own church situation was not always met with

positive affirmation. Today just as in Jesu

Table of contents

• Dedication
• Author’s Preface
• 1. I Wasn’t Expecting This!
• 2. Why Is This So Hard?
• 3. How Could She Do This to Me?
• 4. How Can This Be?
• 5. A Roman Soldier
• 6. The Innkeeper’s Wife
• 7. A Night to Remember
• 8. We Saw It in the Heavens
• 9. A Prayer Is Answered
• 10. Patience with God
• 11.Where Did This Come From?
• 12 What Can A Woman Do?
• 13. I Will Never Give Up
• 14. Caught? Or Framed?
• 15. I Should Have Been a Boy
• 16. I Could Use Some Help Here!
• 17. Where Can I Worship?
• 18. When You Really Need Help
• 19. So This Is What the World Looks Like!
• 20. One of the Ten
• 21. No One to Help Me
• 22. I Don’t Know Who I Am
• 23. Look Out Below!
• 24. Never Miss a Chance to Do Good
• 25. Short Is Only in Your Mind
• 26. Just Doing Good
• 27. A Cautious Faith
• 28. How Was I to Know?
• 29 A Matter of Life and Death
• 30. Take a Deep Breath
• 31. Tell My Brother
• 32. My Mommy Taught Me to Share
• 33. The Questions of a Young Boy
• 34. Helping People Worship
• 35. What is She Doing Here?”
• 36. I Was One of the Good Guys
• 37. I Only Wanted to Help
• 38. This Is Not How I Had Planned It!
• 39. Speaking Out—Too Late
• 40. What Are We Doing Here?
• 41. Prove It!
• 42. The Long Walk Home---Into Our Future
• 43. Mark—A Man on the Edge
• 44. Mark Moves to the Middle
• 45. Even Death Has Power
• 46. Don’t Ask Me to do That
• 47. I Forgot to Open the Gate
• 48. Take the Risk?
• 49. Don’t Kill My Uncle
• 50. We Really Didn’t Want to Leave
• 51. I Can Tell a Good Story
• 52. Generosity on Display
• 53. I Changed My Mind
• 54. From Thief to Bishop in the Church
• List of Persons
• Scripture References