Always the humble God when nobody would listen.
It just blows my mind sometimes how much patience God has for us. We must be like a bunch of ants to Him, running around everywhere, gathering things up and hoarding material goods. This is all fine, as prudence is wisdom, but the difference is, an ant knows it's own existence is only due to God's creation. We humans go about life like ants with a million separate colonies, and we rarely even acknowledge God in any way. Even when we do, we remove Him from our everyday lives, preferring to keep God only in a "special" place. Imagine the frustration you would feel as a human being, if you created something, and not only did it never give you any credit, but actually believed that it's own existence was merely a cosmic accident, and therefore thought that its own agenda was the meaning of life. Talk about getting dissed!
So then God decides, "They don't get it, so I've got to fix this" and sends His only Son down to try and talk some sense into us. He even tells us, through Jesus, that whatever we've done in the past that might be keeping us from thinking we deserve God's love, it's okay, all is forgiven. He sacrifices the Son of Man to try and make His point clear to us. We still, for the most part, don't listen.
This part of the Gospel of John is a great example of the fact that we have stopped speaking God's language. Even the Jewish authorities, considered the most enlightened people at the time, couldn't recognize God when He came in the form of a man, Jesus Christ, to speak with them. Nicodemus, the most liberal of the Pharisees, cannot come to terms with Christ's words about the need for men to be reborn in the spirit. All he can do is compare what Christ is saying to the physical realm.
This is the mistake a lot of us make, including myself. When something comes along that we either don't understand or just cannot explain in human terms, we immediately reject it. Not only that, but we will argue our own personal opinion about it, instead of just accepting something or someone for what they say that they are! The Pharisees in Christ's time tried to argue that Jesus could not have known Moses or Abraham, as He claimed, because He was merely human. They completely missed the point that God needed to send his message in human form because nobody was listening and/or couldn't understand Him when He spoke as God! Imagine how much God wanted to just throw a few bolts of lightning down while Jesus was talking, just to prove to the people, "IT'S ME!" and stop the squabbling? He didn't do that, because He gave us freedom of choice, just like any father gives to their child, always giving us the option of coming home to Him whenever we are ready to accept His rule.
Here's an example; If you meet a man, and he claims to be a doctor, do you immediately question him and say, "Where's your labcoat and your stethoscope?". If you meet a woman, and she claims to be a mother, do you challenge her with questions like, "Where are your kids then? Let me see their birth certificates!". No, you don't. It's only when someone claims to be something we cannot understand that we feel threatened or suspicious. It's a protective device that we need to have, but to know and accept God we need to curb this attitude and just BELIEVE.
Here's another simple analogy (as you can tell I love analogies); You and some friends are standing near the edge of a cliff on one side of a canyon. You can handle this side of the canyon, but it's kinda crowded, sparse, and dry, with only the bare necessities on hand. You notice that the other side of the canyon looks really nice, especially since once in a while people will come over to your side and tell you how great it is over there. You never figured out how those people get from one side to the other though. Suddenly, one of your friends goes up to the edge of the cliff and jumps off. "That's insane!" is your first reaction, "what is he doing?" you think. Then you notice that he's somehow reappeared on the other side of the canyon, enjoying the good stuff over there. When he's done he comes back, but you don't see how he does it, so you ask him, "I don't get it, how did you get to the other side? Weren't you afraid when you just jumped off of the cliff over here?". He answers you by telling you this;
"Well, I was wondering the same thing one day, so I asked someone who comes and goes from over there how they did it, and they told me that there's an invisible bridge crossing the canyon. They said that all I needed to do was get permission from the guy at the gate on the bridge and I could cross. The first thing I said was that I couldn't see any of this stuff, what bridge? what gate-keeper? what were they seeing that I couldn't see? They answered me by saying that they can't see the bridge or the gate-keeper either, and that I just had to have faith and believe it was there. So now I'm thinking these dudes from the other side are just nuts! But all of a sudden this guy leaps off of the edge of the cliff and reappears on the other side! So I thought about it for a few seconds and then just closed my eyes, allowed myself to believe in the bridge and the gate-keeper, and I jumped! The first thing that happened was inside of me, I saw and heard a man at a gate ask me, 'do you believe in me?' so I said, 'yes' and POOF! I was on the other side with all of these other people, and it's so cool over there! All they do is sing and dance and pray and smile all day long! The weird thing was, I could come and go from that side to this one whenever I wanted to as well, and I never really leave either place."
"I don't get it..." you answer.
Take a leap of faith. Just believe. You don't have to give up anything you are, just everything you KNOW.
Created over 2 years ago
