A-2 WHO ARE YOU, JESUS? CAN WE HAVE A GLANCE AT YOUR FACE OR YOUR EYES TO KNOW YOU BETTER?

For any human being to make a spiritual or emotional connection with Jesus, one must first know Jesus as a human being. His humanity is the first and the simplest layer of Jesus’ personality for us to comprehend. As human beings, it is easier to understand another human being from the psychological, emotional, spiritual, and physical perspectives. If we cannot even understand Jesus from the human perspectives, how can we possibly understand Jesus from the profound mysterious divine perspectives?

How can the finite comprehend the Infinite?
Even though there are very few clues about the physical appearance of Jesus, one cannot help trying to imagine what is unimaginable someone who is to become our best friend, our most gentle Shepherd and our loving Messiah! We can’t help it because as human beings, we are all born curious.
We always seek and probe the mysterious issues in life and even when we stare at the deepest chasm of mystery and in our blindness, we still keep wondering and pondering why there are no answers at all!

I suppose that if a person could just have a glimpse of the eyes of Jesus, then he or she would be able to understand God a little better. Or maybe, God will be a little less mysterious and become more approachable.
As the saying goes, `The eye is the window to the soul.’

Yet nobody seems to have really seen the eyes of Jesus.
Are his eyeballs black or blue or green?
Does Jesus have hard, sharp and penetrating eyes?
Or does he have kind inviting eyes that are full of compassion & love?

With his deep intuition, the mystical poet, William Blake, also tries to take a peep at the face of Jesus to know his Messiah better:

The vision of Christ that thou dost see
In my vision’s greatest enemy:
Thine has a great hook nose like thine,
Mine has a snub nose like to mine…
Both read the Bible day and night,
But thou read black where I read white.

For this reason, as William Blake’s poem expresses so well, sometimes those of us who seek Jesus simply cannot see past our own noses. Facing the total vacuum of Jesus’ bio-data, it takes a mystical poet like Blake to paint Jesus’ face from his imagination and intuition.
During the wars of religion with France, the popular English slogan was “The pope is French but Jesus Christ is English!”

Maybe we can look at the ancient traditions to get a glimpse of Jesus.
Philip Yancey, the author of `The Jesus I Never Knew,’ believed that according to one tradition dating back to the 2nd century, it was suggested that Jesus was a hunchback. In the Middle Ages, Christians generally believed that Jesus had suffered from leprosy. However, most Christians today would find such notions about Jesus’ physical appearance repulsive and unacceptable. Surely, God would have chosen the perfect human specimen as the human model for His Son, Jesus! How could the Father degrade His Son with such a despicable human body? To quote Philip Yancey, “Our glamorized representations of Jesus say more about us than about Him. He had no supernatural glow about him: John the Baptist admitted he never would have recognized Jesus apart from special revelation.”

In the Old Testament, Isaiah had probably provided a physical portrait of the Messiah based on a prophecy written hundreds of years before Christ’s birth: “Just as there were many who were appalled at him- his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any man and his form marred beyond human likeness… He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised, and we esteemed him not.”

Now we have to remember the wisdom of this old saying: “God’s ways are not man’s ways.” If we, like the Jews during Jesus’ times, could have our ways, we would have persuaded God to send a different kind of Messiah- one that was born in the grandest palace or escorted by the mightiest army on earth or banish Satan and his demons with all their evils from this earth.
But God often does things to shock us with what is radical and unconventional; with what is socially unacceptable; extracting profound wisdom from the foolish minds etc. So we have to be prepared to accept the unpredictable and the unexpected from our profound infinite God.
If God has sent us a Christ with no facial or physical description, He must have a very good purpose. Jesus with his gospel of love is the strong message. Jesus’ face is nothing; his message is everything!

Submitted by Alphonsus YKK

 

 

A-1 FROM THE VARIOUS PERSPECTIVES OF WRITERS AND THINKERS, WE HOPE TO PROBE THE TRUTH TO JESUS’ QUESTION: “BUT WHO DO YOU THINK I AM?”

The well-known author Robert Fulghum, when attending lectures, would sometimes respond in an unusual way to the speaker’s final, routine words: “Are there any questions?”
Fulghum would sometimes ask, “What is the meaning of life?”
One day, Fulghum got a solemn answer.
This unconventional answer came from Dr. Alexander Papaderos, a Greek philosopher. He raised his hand and said, “I will answer your question.” Then he put his right hand into his pocket and showed a small round mirror. Growing up during the war in a poor family, he had few toys. One day he found the broken pieces of a mirror, left over from the wreck of a motorcycle. He tried in vain to fit the bits together, but finally ended up keeping the largest piece of mirror. Then he scratched it on a stone and made it round just like a large coin.
Then he explained further, “I began to play with it as a toy and became fascinated by the fact that I could reflect light into dark places where the sun would never shine- in deep holes and crevices and dark closets. It became a game for me to get light into the most inaccessible places I could find.”

“I kept the little mirror and as I went about my growing up, I would take it out in idle moments and continue the challenge of the game. As I became a man, I grew to understand that this was not just a child’s game but a metaphor for what I might do in my life…With what I have, I can reflect light into the dark places of this world- into the black places in the hearts of men- and change some things in some people.”
Having said that, Dr. Papaderos held his mirror and caught the rays of sunlight through the window, reflecting them in Fulghum’s face.

“But who do you think I am?“ This famous question of Jesus continues to resonate in the minds of countless people over the last two thousand years. Ultimately, you have to give your own personal answer to this crucial question. Your answer -your subjective truth- is paramount in defining your personal relationship with Jesus because how you see Jesus Christ will define you as a true disciple or a pseudo-Christian.
Your answer will enlarge or constrict your degree of interaction with Jesus. If you see Jesus as your great moral teacher or prophet, then you will accept him as merely another good human being and his inspiration to you will also be limited by your ceiling of acceptance of Jesus as a great human being like Gandhi. In short, your definition of Jesus will define or limit your own spiritual capacity to accept his influence or gifts or grace.

But if you define Jesus as your Messiah like St. Thomas, then you will enlarge your capacity infinitely. Being able to accept Jesus as God, you are mentally and spiritually prepared to accept his healing grace, his miracles, his unconditional love, compassion and forgiveness of your mistakes and sins, thereby removing all the toxic materials from the ground to allow you to plough and plant new seeds of your spiritual growth. Jesus Christ can only help you to the limit of your faith or your willingness to accept his help. Because you have been endowed with a free will, Jesus can only pour his grace and love into your soul according to the size of your container, that is in turn limited by your defining answer of whom you think Jesus really is. You can only relate to Jesus as God if you think that he is your personal God. You cannot relate to Jesus as your God if you don’t even believe that he is God.
In short, your personal quest and your perception of Jesus will define you  in this spiritual relationship.

Submitted by Alphonsus YKK

GETTING YOUR PRIORITIES RIGHT IN YOUR LIFE.

 

 

Your life is created from the inside out, so you must get right with you on the inside- and that takes time and focus on you; not your social mask, but you.
This stuff about self, about who you are on the inside, matters, it really matters.
Why? Because a life without colour is a life without excitement and passion.
It is a gray existence where you put one foot in front of the other and go through the motions without any emotions. You spend all of your energy meeting expectations and doing jobs and chores. You stop really living and instead start existing.

When chores, routine existence, and just playing it safe become the only purpose in life, there is no purpose, and one must be found. You need to know your `highest and best use’ in this world, and then to pursue it. How tragic would it have been if Einstein had spent his life as a merchant or a sailor?
In order for you ever to effectively figure out and map out how to get to where you want to go, you have to first know exactly where you are starting. Where you are now, everything you are, everything you do, begins with and is based on what I call your personal truth. By personal truth, I mean whatever it is that you, at the absolute, uncensored core of your being, have come to believe about you. This personal truth is critical because if you believe it, if it is real to you, then it is for you the precise reality that you will live every day. We all have and live our own personal truth, whether we want to or not…. No matter how hard you try, you can never escape your personal truth; it always gets you in the end, which is why it is so critical that you clean it up and get rid of all the doubt and distortion.

Adapted from `SELF MATTERS’  By Dr Phillip C. Mc Graw

 

 

 

Life is simply Magical if you can simply LET GO of your emotional burdens.

The Magic of Living

Magic of Living

This moment is pure magic. Though it may seem completely ordinary and without distinction, this moment is surely a miracle.
For in this moment, every possibility exists. Right now, in this very moment, you can act to make a difference in your own life, and you can truly change the world.
Though you see no mystical vapours and hear no mysterious voices, this moment is as intensely magical as they come. For the real magic of living is not in strange, unexplained visions, but in the beautiful essence of your being.
You are here and you are now. You can think and feel, you can love and understand, you can experience and you can do.
What could possibly be more magical than that? In this ordinary, everyday moment the profound and exquisite magic of living is yours.
Choose wisely from the vast array of possibilities that have opened up to you in this moment. And live the magic that is here right now.

Ralph Marston

THE TRANSFORMATION OF THIS BLOG FROM A CRAWLING WORM TO A BUTTERFLY.

This blog first started life several years entitled `The Art of Living and Dying.’

This idea came into my head only a few days ago. I have been thinking lately what can I do to make a difference in somebody’s life that is unbearable because he or she has been struck by terrible adversities one after another. As the saying goes, troubles never come alone. They often come and attack you like a pack of wolves. I can say that with confidence because in recent years, I had experienced a avalanche of misfortunes that make me feel that it was better to be dead than alive.

My adverse circumstances have triggered my recollection of a true story of a good friend who confided in me about his personal problems that seemed to cast a hopeless pitch-black cloud in his life. I was vacationing in his place and staying with his family for several weeks. One night, after his night bath and still in his bath towel, he talked to me about ending his life so that he would not be a liability to his younger wife. At his advanced age, he was chronically depressed because his eyesight was failing him so badly that he would not be able to drive anymore. He was also losing his sex drive. These two things meant very much to him- his love of driving and his love for his wife. He told me with tears welling up in his eyes that he did not want to live anymore. There was no more meaning to continue living and he was thinking seriously of ending his life by shooting himself on the head. Then he would not be a liability and a burden to his wife anymore.

I listened with some tears in my eyes too. I could empathize with him on his predicament. If I were in his situation, becoming blind would be a catastrophe! I remember telling him that committing suicide was not the final solution to his problems.

I remember persuading him with the following words:

“Look at it in a different way. If you commit suicide, it would be like a person leaving behind a pile of shit messing up your wife’s life. In the end, instead of solving the problem, it would be passing to her a more messy problem that stinks in her world for a long long time to come. Your suicide would fill her life with a lot of guilt about her failure in preventing your suicide. She would hold herself responsible for your suicide and that would be a horrible psychological burden you will be passing to her. If you really love her, please don’t give this shit to her!”

My reasoning seemed to hit the nail on the coffin. He could see that commiting suicide was not an option to the solution of his personal problems. After pondering for a while, he thanked me and promised that he would not commit suicide. He was true to his promise. He lived a few more years learning to grope around as a blind man with a white stick. He had learned to accept his adversities, came to term with life and lived out his remaining few years gracefully. He passed away peacefully a few years ago. More importantly, he had learned the art of dying without passing the shit and the mess to his wife! The art of dying leaves behind a fragrance of love.

Submitted by David YKK

Postscript- This blog has been entombed in the cocoon for several years until the recent Easter, when it has been transformed and resurrected as a blog dedicated to the search for Jesus’ core teachings and his wholesome philosophy.

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