who do you hang with?

Mark 2 

13 Then Jesus went out to the lakeshore again 

and taught the crowds that were coming to him. 

14 As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at his tax collector’s booth. 

“Follow me and be my disciple,” Jesus said to him. 

So Levi got up and followed him.

15 Later, Levi invited Jesus and his disciples to his home as dinner guests, along with many tax collectors and other disreputable sinners. (There were many people of this kind among Jesus’ followers.) 16 But when the teachers of religious law who were Pharisees saw him eating with tax collectors and other sinners, they asked his disciples, “Why does he eat with such scum”

17 When Jesus heard this, he told them, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.”

There is a reason I almost always share these fews every time my daily reading takes me through them.

I share it to challenge us with the thought that not only did JESUS want to hang with "disreputable sinners" or "scum" but these people who were considered outcasts & moral degenerate WANTED to hang around Jesus.

And if we claim to be followers of Jesus, then we should ask ourselves continually 2 things:

Do WE have enough of Jesus love in us that WANT to hang out with "scum"?

And have we allowed ourselves to be so transformed by Jesus love in us that people we know who are considered "scum" WANT to hang with us?

If the answers to those 2 questions is "yes", then it would be interesting to figure out why.

And if the answers to either of those questions is "no", then it too would be interesting to know why.