Oh Mercy. What a crazy life we lead. RIght? Recently I asked God to help me learn to shoot lazer beams at people that I am having trouble with. And the image I was left with was something like the above picture. This would be super cool, if I could really do this. Come on God! Don't you agree?? Wouldn't that be really cool??
I really should start at the beginning of my story though...
I have been struggling with a particular person in my life. This person can drive me completely insane. Sometimes I have every reason to be annoyed, and other times, I am the one being ridiculous. But regardless I see this person on a regular basis, and it is NOT always easy being "Christ Like" to them. You know these people too, I assume. At least I pray I am not the only one who struggles with this.
So the other day, I happen to find a few minutes of time to really pray. REALLY PRAY. This doesn't happen often but when it does amazing things happen. I was thinking about this Blog, and I said a prayer for all you crazy people who have read anything I have written here. God BLESS YOU ALL. I don't know who are, or if you are reading anything you like, but I pray that God will bless you abundantly just for reading a page of anything I have written. Really and truthfully.
Well gradually my prayers of gratitude shifted to whining; and then my eyes found a crucifix. What a strange symbol we have of our faith. It is comparable to walking into a room filled with statues of electric chairs. Some empty, or some with an figure strapped to one with a terrible look of pain on their face. Think about how strange that really would be to walk into a house of prayer and see an image of a man being electrocuted at the front center. Terrible. Just terrible.
Then my mind wandered back to the original scene at Golgotha. I was imaging myself walking on a cold, dark, night, past hundreds of people who were heading the opposite direction back toward the city gates. The looks on these peoples faces were ones of shock, sorrow, disappointment, confusion, or even blank. Something momentous just occurred, but no one really could explain it.
As I keep walking, I notice how grotesquely silent the night is. There is NO noise anywhere. No sounds of birds, or bats. No sounds of rustling leaves, no wind seeming to blow. Almost as if life had just paused. I can only hear the sound of my own heart beat, and my own breath as I pick up my pace in a direction that no one else seems to be going.
Then up ahead, I see a few people surrounding three very large poles in the ground. There in the middle one is my God. My king of kings, my Lord of Lords, my prince of peace, and the one for whom my SOUL loves. There he is, this man that I have been whining too, about how challenging my life is. The one who I was hoping to have comfort me because I was feeling hurt, and abandoned. He is there in the middle of this very small crowd of people, hanging from a cross, dying.
He is in Pain. Even though he is God, he is completely human. He feels the pain. But the look on his face tells me the pain isn't just from the nails in his hands. The pain he is feeling is also from the pain of betrayal, the pain of abandonment, the pain of all that he is about to lose on this earth. Even though his Divine nature tells him there will be great celebration when it is finished, he will no longer get to experience life as a human. No more fishing with his friends, or sharing the truth about the Kingdom of God with those he encounters on earth. No more healing the sick and the blind with his own human hands; that job is going to be passed on to those less qualified.
That must have hurt.
So now here I am standing at the foot of the cross with all my hurts, and I am about to lay them at his feet. My response was immediately back to gratitude. All of the bad feelings that I brought with me, he has also experienced, and he experienced them to point of DEATH. So Jesus, instead of trying to burden you with more of my "Not such a big deal" troubles. Please let me know what I can do to HELP you.
What can I do?
Immediately I felt God place on my heart the message from the Beatitudes. LOVE those who trouble me. Love them. Love them all. That's when I get so excited that I pray to be fill with so much love from God that I am literally BURSTING with LOVE. I want to BURST WITH love so much so that it is not just overflowing out of me, but that it is literally spewing out of my body. I want to be as powerful as the pressure washer that we just used to clean the sidewalks in front of my house. I WANT TO BE SO LOVING THAT PEOPLE HURT FROM THE LOVE THAT POURS OUT OF ME.
I want to shoot LAZER BEAMS of Love out of my eyes and and ears and mouth. Wouldn't that be super cool????
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