Jesus

Jesus Christ has been a controversial figure of late — and that's nothing new. He was a radical from the get-go, and it's taken us awhile to get used to the idea of doing things His way. Sure, we've done all sorts of things in His name; but that's not quite the same as living the true Christian message.

Fundamentalist Christians would have us believe that Jesus is the only way to God. That's always seemed silly to me, and I bet Jesus agrees. God is everywhere, in everyone, and we're all on our way to knowing that and fully opening our hearts to it. God is forever calling us Home.

During my own brief time as a fundamentalist Christian — a few months during my senior year in high school — I never really knew, never really experienced, Jesus. I experienced a heck of a lot of human love, as the members of my church guided me in Christ's direction; and I "received the Holy Spirit and accepted Jesus Christ as my Personal Savior," which involved a lot of heartfelt emotion and looking for God; but when I told my church friends that Jesus had spoken to me and touched my soul, I was … stretching the truth. Or stretching toward the truth.

I desperately wanted those things to happen; but they didn't, not until more than 20 years later, at a moment in my life when Jesus was the last thing on my mind and I wasn't actively searching at all.

Then one morning, as I lay in bed just after awakening, eyes still closed, there He was. I couldn't see him, but there was just no doubt at all who was there at the foot of my bed.

He asked me just one simple question; but later, when I took it apart word by word, I was amazed at both the depth of the meaning and the clever way He played with language.

He asked, "Will you bear with me, and help me to be born(e)?"

I said I would.

In the nearly 20 years since, I have mostly ignored and forgotten Jesus. I have relegated the experience of that morning to insignificance, and stripped it of its power. But real is real, and a deal's a deal.

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