JESUS NEVER CAME FOR THE RIGHTEOUS PEOPLE. HE CAME FOR THOSE WHO ARE
SUCCUMBING TO EVIL AND DON’T KNOW HOW TO STOP. HE CAME FOR THOSE WHO
LONG FOR GOD AND DON’T KNOW HOW TO REACH HIM.
squirrel and laughed and went into the house.
Someone turned on the television. Rioting
in the city. Our host, a gentle young mother
of two, walked up to the screen and pointed
it away from herself. “I’ll be fine, as long as I
don’t have to look at that.”
I think of the gentle host, and of Vienna with
her body piercings and her hurts from the
past, and the boyfriend, and the rioters on the
television, and myself–and I think of us as one
large, breathing mass of humanity. We struggle for good; we are surrounded, crushed in,
and attracted by evil. They are two in us–the
good and the evil–warring, and we wonder if
the good ever wins, or if it is always the evil.
We are one with the young man who stares
down depression, one with the starving blackeyed baby who will not stop crying, one with
the girl-child sold into prostitution. We are
one with the cowering woman beaten into
submission, and one with the gray eyed maniac who beats her. This is Vienna; this is I; and
this is Jesus, who lives in the mud.
SOMETHING SIMPLE
I realize now that Jesus is not a Holy Wizard,
come down to save the people born into the
right time and the right place and the right religion. He is not a magical incantation uttered
from a book; He is not three simple steps to
salvation. He is someone who stepped into a
need greater than the world and said, “I have
a solution.”
The righteous, or those who think they are
righteous, will not see a need for Jesus. But Jesus never came for the righteous people.
9
He came for those who are succumbing to
evil and don’t know how to stop. He came for
those who long for God and don’t know how
to reach Him. He came for those who are sick
to death of their own sin and can find no religion to help them conquer it. He came to be
the hope in the young man’s eye, the future of
the starving black-eyed child, the avenger of
the girl prostitute, the comfort of the cowering
woman, the regeneration of the wife beater.
This is Jesus, who sees no sin too great, no hurt
too deep. Jesus who transforms lives, breaks
iron chains, casts demons down to the depths
of hell. Jesus, who fulfills my God-longing and
opens the doorway to spiritual life.
This is Jesus, who is everything–my alcohol,
my sports craze, my lover, my drug.
This is Jesus, who lives in mud. |