Alienation

Blacks from Whites, Arab from Jew, Adolescents from Parents..all around us and throughout our world we see the need to reach out in love toward our fellow humans; to love people as they are. In a little Jewish town many years ago God did just this. He reached out in love to every human being, through His own Son, Jesus Christ.

In the Gospels (Matthew, Mark ,Luke and John,), are the story of that Man, Jesus Christ, the extension of God’s love and at the same time God, Himself, Who in flesh and blood, reached out to outcasts, fishermen, tax collectors, toddlers and businessmen alike.

It was a rugged world He entered. Men were sold like animals to die for others’ amusement. Rumors of insurrection buzzed in cities and towns, and at times, when walking along the road one could see the places of mass executions. It was a sordid world—of poverty contrasted with opulence, of men being treated as less than human, of women degraded, of racial strife and hatred. So…much like nowadays.

Into this world Jesus came, not as an emperor, but as a low-born person, to taste the poverty, the sorrow, the anguish, to be just one man facing a system in which men exploited men, Jew hated Samarian, Roman hated Jew, and religion was usually phony (sounds familiar).

Jesus entered as a baby and grew up to become a spiritual revolutionary. He, Who had created both tiny flowers and distant stars, entered the corruption (yes, corruption) of His once perfect creation, and, in His reaching out to people with the TRUTH, He revolutionized the religious establishment (thinking needs to be done again), by transforming individuals.

How? Read the Gospels, the first four books of the New Testament. Why are there four, you might ask? Aren’t they repetitious?

Not when you consider how crucial are these factual, eyewitness accounts of what Jesus said and did!

We read about the life of Jesus and what an impact He had. We see how the first Christians turned the world upside down. Reminds me of the late 60’s and early 70’s, The Jesus Revolution. We are desperately in need of another Jesus Revolution!