If you were God and you chose to be born a human being how would you have done it? Find a list of choices below and see how your preferences compare with God’s. (Remember, you are God, the whole world is yours.)
1. When would you come to earth? Probably around this time right? At least a time in history with electricity and light and indoor plumbing and TV of course! Wrong!! God came 2000 yrs. ago not long after the Bronze Age. People were just learning farming and writing.
2. Where would you be born? Let’s see . . . Paris? New York? Hawaii? Some exotic and beautiful place probably. Wrong!! God was born in a backward little town called Bethlehem next to the largest desert in the world.
3. Who would be your family? Your blood? Some famous stock of Roman or Greek or Egyptian nobility? Wrong!! Your blood is Jewish, a minor tribal grouping of people who were slaves for most of their history.
4. What would your financial situation be? I mean really . . . God is rich. Right? God, as man, would have the material world at his fingertips. What comfort would not be yours while on earth? Wrong!! He was born in a stable. His parents had to stretch to make the simplest of payments. The bible says he literally had no home.
5. Who would your friends and associates be? The educated, the executives, the cultured and high class, the religious for sure. Wrong!! He hung with the working class. Fishermen, carpenters. He ate with the outcasts: extortionists (tax collectors), prostitutes, lepers.
6. Who would you have close to you? Your wife? Your cabinet? Cleopatra? The Queen of Sheba? The Harvard Board of Directors? Wrong!! You never marry (“What’s wrong with that boy?”). Your Cabinet (The Apostles) prove to be traitors and cowards.
7. What would be your greatest achievement? To be universally acclaimed as King of all the world? To have every people and nation bow to your smallest command? Wrong!! Your greatest achievement will be your death—naked and nailed to a cross— and then your Resurrection.
I think you begin to see how differently God chose to live his life from the way you and I would. That’s because we don’t get it. We think the purpose of life is to enjoy, to be fulfilled, to be happy in the ways this world can deliver. And as lovely as they are, we must be careful. We can get blinded by the shiny, sparkly things and begin to think that having them is why I’m here on earth.
To correct this Jesus came to show us what God the Father had in mind when he made us humans. How we are to be a Light to the World, not a sponge. We are a seed that dies to itself so it can give life a hundred fold. We are a branch united to God’s Vine (Christ) that receives his very life into us. (Read Mt. 5:13 – – The Beatitudes for the new key to happiness.)
And here’s the point . . . if we miss this we miss everything . . . “apart from me you can do nothing.” Jn. 15:5 Like a branch separated from the vine, we wither over time. That’s because we’re living life apart from our source – God.
What wondrous love God is! The small, the humble, the gentle, reveal His infinite power. This power of love has overcome the world. Jn. 16:33
It’s still Easter!!
Fr. Tim
