Growing up in a conservative Baptist church in some ways reduced Jesus and grace to a mechanical transaction rather than the rich coloured masterpiece of personal encounter I perhaps subconsciously desire.
Jesus has largely to date been a rather two-dimensional object of my study. Perhaps I can best describe the ingredients of my upbringing as being given a colouring book but only a single pencil. I had an idea of what I might be able to become, to see, but trying to turn a green crayon yellow or a red pen blue ultimately frustrated and the scene missing in what the author intended.
While my journey has seen many changes, much healing and new hope I recently was invited in my spirit to read the Gospels again, but this time note only the emotions of Jesus. His reactions. His outbursts. To see the person with the dusty feet and caring hands. Was he funny? What bugged him? Would I have enjoyed his company? Will I?
This is not the exercise in reducing Jesus to the vernacular many seem to enjoy but simply an exploratory desire to see who’s actually there. Who is it I pray to? Hope in? Not what (with this I am familiar), but who? I’m tired of a God who specialises in spiritual engineering alone and thirsty for one who wants to hold my hand, laugh with me and one I’ll recognise one day as that Great Friend I made on earth.
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