Jesus loves everyone yet, so few ever think to truly love Him in return. Most refuse to believe that such a man existed as the Son of God and the Son of Man. The idea seems impossible so, they downsize Jesus into a form they can relate to and understand. Prophet, teacher, a myth, philosophical allegories are the boxes spiritually blind human beings use as a neat place to categorize and store Jesus. Once packaged and labeled, He is then stuffed in back of a dark closet of the mind. Jesus becomes another file to pull up from memory to be used as self justification or to impress another with personal intellectual prowess. In those who are bitter toward God because they don’t approve of how He governs or are mad because He didn’t acquiesce to their personal requests, Jesus becomes a weapon of ridicule to use against those who name, Jesus and are known as His followers. Jesus Christ is a favorite curse word for those who in their anger of not getting what-they-want-their-way, deny the existence of God even though, their whole angry state of being and every word they speak against God and His Son, defines them. Still, Jesus loves them and views them as equal with all of God’s errant children. Many of the religiously pious also, miss out on recognizing the power of God’s love expressed to the uttermost in Jesus, the Son of God and the Son of Man. Priding themselves upon adherence to traditions and doctrines, they trade in the power of God for a form of godliness and their pride inhibits the power of God’s love from transforming their lives. Yet, Jesus loves them. Still others live out their lives by instinct, following the desires of their heart that can never fill what every heart hungers for, the filling of divine love. Jesus loves these children too. He gave His life for all of us in obedience to God, His Father and also, to all of God’s errant children, as an expression of pure, sacrificial love. He poured out His blood for the purpose of covering all of our error to give us the opportunity to reconcile with our Father by adoption through Christ that we might become like Jesus, sons of men and sons of God. Though Jesus made this sacrifice centuries ago, it still remains open for an unknown length of time but not forever. This offer is available to everyone because God plays no favorites and above all things: God honors the ability He gave us, to choose. Whatever any of us decide to believe about Jesus, or the place we give Him in our life is our personal, sovereign choice and no matter the consequences, God will not take that power of self away.

Look around you, look behind the present virtual-iron-curtain of delusion, and examine the true state of the world in which you are living. The world offers many things but it doesn’t offer love. It is a hard, cruel place that entices all with exciting, temporary pleasures that generally, come at the personal expense of self and others. The world created by human beings is vicious, a place where one will become either predator or prey, and the struggle to survive over-rides any happiness derived from material gain or personal power. Into such a world everyone of us in born and also in each of us, is a void that hungers for divine love. Instinctually, we know what we hunger for is the very ingredient missing that keeps the societies we build from becoming a paradise. This realization when we allow it and then couple it by looking within to see we are like the community we live in because it is of us and we too lack divine love and are possessed by a dark void. A hole, where love that goes beyond a warm feeling or a fragile, emotional bond is absent, a cavity in the soul that only divine love can completely fill. None of us can give the world what we don’t have and the only, way we can receive the love we hunger for and the world so desperately needs is to allow Jesus to come into our lives and be made complete. This doesn’t mean we will become instantaneously, perfect but when we are reconciled to a right relationship with God, when we are adopted into His family, a spiritual training process begins and though we remain human as the offspring of man, we also become the spiritual children of God. Choosing first to accept God’s divine love by accepting Jesus as the person He describes Himself to be and personally, applying his sacrifice is the first step in learning how to love as Jesus loves. Learning to love Him back is the process of living for Christ rather than for self and then, choosing to love others with the same kind of divine love we receive from Jesus in hopes that others who are hungering for love will also, invite Jesus into their lives.

I see turmoil increasing in the world around me and the specter of it causes even this old believer to sometimes, feel threatened. It seems darkness is descending and many are actually, calling for that descent. Angry ears are deaf to love but the night enveloping the world is the void that exists in every fallen human being; a gaping black hole that only divine love can fill. Jesus is the embodiment of divine love. None of us have the power to change or fix the world but each of us retains the power of personal choice. Jesus is the answer and He satisfies our great lack, one hungry heart at a time. If you are troubled, consumed by the turmoil without and within please, take a second look at Jesus. Read the Bible and consider who He says Himself to be and use the power God gave you to be saved from the gaping need within that only, Christ can fill. In a world that seems bent on self-destruction, choose Jesus; receive true love and eternal life.