A guy named Daniel, he lives in Canada,
and he owns his own cleaning company.
And, back in 2015, he was looking for a unique way to advertise his business.
And there was going to be a local community parade.
And he thought that would be a really, really excellent place
to advertise his business
because a lot of places advertise.
But he didn't want to do the normal thing of setting up a table
or handing out giveaways
or different things like that.
Instead, he decided to go in a very different direction.
Instead of
any of those normal things,
he decided to fly over the parade in a lawn chair.
Like, have you ever seen the movie "Up"?
Where an elderly man attaches balloons to his house and floats away.
I mean that's fiction.
But Daniel actually did that in reality.
Not to a house but to a lawn chair.
He tied 100 helium balloons to a lawn chair.
He sat it in and
it lifted him above the parade.
As a banner advertising his business flew behind him.
And he got airborne.
He went about 14,000 feet in the air.
At one point, a 747 jet flew underneath him.
He realized, once he got in the air, he didn't know how to steer.
He hadn't thought that part through.
And so he never actually got to the parade.
And after about an hour of floating in the air,
after he was about six miles away from the parade,
he started getting kind of scared
because the wind started blowing him around and he felt very, very unsafe.
So, once he got a little bit closer to the ground,
he unbuckled himself from the lawn chair
and fell down to the ground.
I believe he rolled his ankle or broke his ankle.
He got hurt in some kind of way.
And then he was arrested.
And, Daniel,
who eventually got a nickname,
the news people started calling him "The Balloonatic,"
Daniel eventually had his day in court
for apparently not,
not getting permission to fly a lawn chair over a parade.
And, in court, the judge handed him a $20,000 fine.
And it was after he got the $20,000 fine
that Daniel said in front of the court that
he would do it all over again.
That it was entirely worth it.
That it was the greatest experience of his life.
So, in other words
a great life according to Daniel,
is one in which he gets to fly
over everyone in a balloon-powered lawn chair.
What's your definition of a great life?
I want you to think about it this way.
Imagine that you and Jesus are walking along,
just the two of you.
And at one point he stops.
And he looks at you and he says,
"How ya doin?"
And you respond by saying, "Jesus,
"I think it would be really great
"if . . ."
But I want you to finish that sentence.
What would you say?
If you knew that Jesus
was going to do anything for you.
What would you ask him to do?
That's basically what we're going to be looking at this week
as we look at an incident with
two of Jesus disciples.
James and John, when Jesus really, he asks them that question.
He asks them the question, "What do you want me to do for you?"
And they were really happy to hear that question.
I think for the same reason you and I would be.
Because we sometimes wonder if we're going to be okay.
I don't know what was on their minds that day
when Jesus talked to them but
maybe you wonder if your marriage is going to make it.
Maybe you wonder if your kids are going to keep their faith.
Maybe you wonder if the cancer is going to go away.
Maybe you wonder if your life is making any kind of real difference.
Or if anyone's going to miss you
when you're gone.
Those aren't always easy questions to answer.
Which is why it's such a great thing that Jesus offered to his disciples
the opportunity
to find, not just good answers
to what might make a good life, but
the promise of what makes a life great
And in this discussion with them,
and in this section that we're going to be reading from,
yeah, he really does exactly that.
He showed them not only that they really didn't have any
kind of idea of what makes for a great life.
But he also showed them that
a great life,
one that makes the best kind of difference,
the greatest kind of difference in this world,
it's really not out of reach for anyone.
So, here's the section we're going to be looking at this week.
Kind of a longer section, but it goes like this. It says,
And really, whatever your definition of greatness is,
Jesus has already given you his.
And that is to serve.
To serve you.
Which means that
your life is already considered pretty great to him.
And we'll be looking at how that applies to our everyday lives
as we go through this week.
I'll see you tomorrow.