Because we are made in God’s image, only He Himself- and not His provisions or blessings or open doors- can satisfy the deepest longings of the human heart.
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Author: Nancy Aziz
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When the Logos says His word…
Everyone in town was talking about this Jesus of Nazareth. I heard that He had fed over 5,000 people miraculously with just five loaves of bread and two fish. He also healed a man who was an invalid for 38 years. He spoke to Samaritans and touched and healed those whom the Pharisees would never even come close to. He seemed like such a good person. But I didn’t dare come close to Him. I knew I lived a life of sin. I wished I could get out of this trap. I felt so desperate for love that I moved from one relationship to the next in search of fulfillment. But after every relationship, I felt used and utterly worthless. None of these men loved me, they just used me to satisfy their desires. But enough about me.
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We Better Watch Out!
Everyone is talking about Christmas. Everyone is “looking for recommendations” for the best Christmas concert and bazaar to attend. Billboards advertising pop artists’ Christmas concerts fill the streets and social media outlets. But are they really celebrating CHRISTmas? What has Christmas become?
“Come on,” you might object, “it’s just fun. After all, ‘tis the spirit of Christmas.” What is “the spirit of Christmas?”
While Christmas and Easter are not mentioned in the Bible as feasts to be celebrated, I’d like to take a quick look at the concept of feasts in the Bible and why God Himself instituted them.
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“Follow Me!”
You cannot read the Gospels and miss Jesus’ repeated phrase, “Follow Me!”
But what does it mean? Can we still follow Him now even though we can’t literally see where He’s going and follow Him like the disciples did?
And if we can’t see Him with our physical eyes, how can we possibly follow Him? Is this some imaginary construct of our minds… just close your eyes and imagine yourself following Jesus? That would be an illusion or delusion as Richard Dawkins would say, but it certainly isn’t!
Most of us have probably played some version of the game “Follow the Leader” or “Simon Says” when we were kids. The game basically begins with a leader whose task is to do certain things (raise his hand, jump, etc.) and the group has to mimic his actions exactly either by seeing him do it or hearing him say it. And according to Wikipedia, “When only one person other than the leader remains, that player becomes the leader.”
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We fed the 5,000
Most of us are familiar with the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000. But allow me to zoom in to the young boy with the five loaves and two fish.
Jesus could have easily prayed for food from heaven. He is the same God who fed the Israelites manna from heaven for years. But He didn’t do that.
Instead He chose to involve a young boy in His orchestration of a miracle. Here was a boy with his lunch who was probably hanging out close enough to Jesus and the disciples that the disciples noticed he had food. Imagine a crowd of 5,000 men, their wives, and children, so we’re talking about at least 15,000 individuals! How did the disciples spot this boy among a crowd of this size? Could this little boy have stayed close because he was especially curious about this Jesus that all the adults were talking about? I wonder.
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The Most Common Question Asked… Why??
Sometimes things just don’t make sense. Sometimes we don’t understand. Many times we ask God, “Why?” and seem to get no response.
But let me admit that many times when I asked “why?” there was a hidden “I don’t really trust you” message behind it. “God, I’ve asked you to be lord of my life, but are you sure you should have done things this way?” “Why is it taking so long?”
And I find myself offering the omniscient God suggestions! How foolish!
It’s so hard for us to let go. It’s so hard for us to trust, especially when we don’t understand. But does God sometimes ask us to trust even when we don’t understand?
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A life worth living
“Without Christ, just reading the stories shared on social media would make me commit suicide,” shared a friend.
Just reading the stories shared on social media, just hearing of young people die of careless accidents and children die of cancer, just seeing the pain that our loved ones experience, just facing our own struggles and insecurities… if left to our own faculties, we have every right to ask if this life is worth living.
What if we lived in utopia? Where there was no pain, no injustice, no struggle, and ultimately no death. Over history, man has tried to create utopian societies. One such society removed the restrictions of a monogamous marriage and child-rearing to a particular couple, creating a community where there were no clear couples and where all children born were brought up by the community, without a set couple of parents. As you would expect, things didn’t go very well, and this utopian experiment failed, along with many others which preceded and followed.
Allow me to take you back some 2,000 years ago. Jesus on His way to Galilee stops by a town in Samaria called Sychar. Any Jew or Samaritan living back then knew that Jews and Samaritans were not friends, actually, there was quite a bit of hostility between them. So here was Jesus, resting from His travels by a well in Samaria.
Then comes a woman who is known to have had five husbands and is currently living with a man who is not her husband. I’d like you to wear Middle Eastern, 2,000-year-old glasses for a moment. This woman probably lived with a very heavy sense of shame to the extent that she went out to the well close to noon, while it was very hot, probably to avoid meeting people who would give her “the looks” that she did everything to try to avoid.
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The Bigger, the Better, the Best
One would think that after all the Black Friday’s we’ve lived through, people would learn that material things do not satisfy.
But if we ourselves are nothing but matter, live life without purpose, and will one day just cease to exist, then we have nothing to hold on to but matter. For according to this materialistic/naturalistic worldview, there is nothing but matter.
And so we race to the stores, race online, race to find the best deals, race to own the better, the bigger, take it all home, enjoy it for a while and then… Well it all fades away and we go shopping for more!
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The Root of Thankfulness
Thankfulness is about being content. And contentment is about going against the tide of materialism, consumerism, egotism, and many other “isms” of the age!
But if we are just the product of random, purposeless forces and will just cease to exist when we die, then why not be egotistic, consumeristic, and materialistic? Why be content? Why be thankful? Why not just “eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die?” (Luke 12:19, 1Cor. 15:32)
Thankfulness is rooted fundamentally in a worldview that does not revolve around oneself. A worldview that does not focus on the temporal but on the eternal. A worldview that teaches giving before receiving. A worldview that teaches serving rather than being served. A worldview that teaches such ironies as loving ones enemies, blessing those who curse us, and praying for those who abuse us. A worldview that seems to go against our egocentric nature.