Meeting Jesus...

Exerpts from Meeting Jesus By Bruce Marchiano

There were many who were blind 2000 years ago; many who were crippled; many whose sons and daughters and fathers and brothers were demon-possessed or dead or languishing neck-deep in pits of the worst kind of poverty yet would choose that blindness, that lameness, that death rather than bend a single knee or shed a single tear in His presence.

You see, there is a blindness far worse than not being able to see. There is a paralysis far worse than legs that are bent and twisted. There is a death far beyond the tomb, a demon-possession far beyond fits of lunacy, a poverty far more devastating than starvation.

It is a disease that Jesus longed to heal and liberate His children from more than any other 2000 years ago, more than any other today. It is the filth of filths, the hell of hells. It is PRIDE, SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS, SELF-JUSTIFICATION, SELF-PURSUIT, SELF-RELIANCE...

When we think of Jesus coming to seek and save "the lost," we tend to envision drug addicts, prostitutes, convicts, and the like. But on a closer look, who could possibly be more lost than one who assumes, by virtue of his own righteousness, his own education, perhaps his own superior
lifestyle, that he doesn't need to be found? Oh, the heartbreak of such lostness! Lostness beyond lostness...

My heart quakes for the passerby who would look into Jesus' face today and respond as carelessly, "not interested." For God so loved the world that He gave His Son, that whoever would believe in Him would not perish, but have eternal life...

There is a way that seems right to man - to take for oneself; to gather to oneself; to provide for, secure and save oneself. And then there is the better way, the Jesus way, the way He chose to live every day of His life and every moment of His death: to give without regard for oneself; to provide for, secure and ultimately heroically, triumphantly, magnificently, save others - at the cost of oneself.

Why? Why would the Son of the Living God, who, if anyone deserved royal treatment in this life it was He, choose a path like that?

As the prophet Isaiah wrote centuries before a nondescript carpenter and his pregnant wife loaded up their donkey and journeyed to Bethleham, "He took up our infirmities,... carried our sorrows... was pierced for our transgressions,... was crushed for our iniquities."

In other words, because He loves you.

To think we are GOD's beloved... His Joy.... How astounding.... Sam.