As a child who would someday grow up to be a writer, I could not get enough of the “story” of Jesus Christ. It was, in truth, my favorite story. Movies like The Robe and The Greatest Story Ever Told, and King of Kings and musical stage productions like Jesus Christ Superstar and GodSpell captured my imagination: but not my soul.
I was raised Catholic by a non-practicing mother. I went to Sunday school, and attended confession on Saturdays. Each week kneeling in that confessional, I would think about the foolishness of having the priest tell me to say a few Hail Mary’s and a couple of Our Father’s to atone for my sins.
At Mass, I would find it difficult to pay attention to the service. It wasn’t reaching me. God seemed to be talking to all the older folks; the blue haired women running rosaries through their fingers, lace doilies pinned to their heads and the stooped shouldered old men who mumbled and crossed themselves a hundred times.
One Sunday the children were instructed to go to the church basement for a “youth service.” A young man with long hair wearing jeans and a tie-dyed tee shirt sat in a chair in the middle of a circle of chairs. He had a guitar and was singing something by Peter Paul and Mary…really. For six exciting Sundays after that, we all got to hear him sing and talk about God…it was the first time in my life I looked forward to church. Then, as soon as he appeared, he was gone. A few years after that, I stopped attending church. I was eleven years old.
As an adult, I would watch the old religious movies when I stumbled across them on an off night or rare day off, and they still managed to enthrall me. Movie Jesus was handsome, mysterious and…entertaining. I fit him when I could…in between working and trying to acquire more and more things and money. My life was not really my own.
In 2004, I followed the media hoopla surrounding Mel Gibson’s Passion of The Christ with interest. I was happy that another Movie Jesus was going to keep me busy for a few hours. I didn’t get to see the movie until years later. When at last I rented The Passion, it was almost 4 years after its release and my carefully constructed life was crumbling around me. My husband of many years had lost faith in us and left me, my sister had lost faith in herself and committed suicide, my finances were in ruins, my job was about to be eliminated and I had lost faith in myself and was on the verge of giving up.
I had spent the year and a half before all of this happened searching for some meaning in my life. I spent hundreds of dollars on self-help books and writings by spiritual and metaphysical gurus. Wayne Dyer told me to manifest my own destiny…Deepak Chopra asked me to find the Godhead within me…Ekhart Tolle chided me to abandon my ego based consciousness, and The Secret told me I could have the world at my fingertips if I just asked for it…hmmm…that’s where things got funky. Every one of these books I was reading had something in common…they all supported parts of their philosophy by showing how Jesus had been teaching the same things.
Now I was intrigued…I started reading the Bible and then found my way to Lee Strobel’s The Case For Christ and something started to click. I had been looking for what I needed in all the wrong places.
In John (14:20) Jesus says to Phillip, “On that day you will know that I am in my Father and you in me, and I in you.” Clearly this is what Deepak Chopra meant when he said that the discovery of God was one of self-discovery, and what Eckhart Tolle meant when he spoke of the single consciousness of the universe. This is further evidenced by Jesus’ words: (Luke 17:20-21) “The kingdom of God does not come visibly, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is within you.”
And in Matthew 21:22 “And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.”…certainly this was the essence of The Secret.
I finally watched the Passion of the Christ alone on a Thursday night and Movie Jesus was forever erased from my memory. I can’t explain how deeply watching that movie affected me. But I was different afterward. I appreciated the story of Jesus even more than before, but now it had reached my soul. I was so profoundly grateful for what He had done for me…I knew it was the Truth and I wanted to tell someone.
I think though that the most persuasive influence has been Anna. She is my “Letter from Christ”. And I am so grateful for her.
So now I am attending New Song service regularly, engaged and moved every week by what I hear and see and so glad to have met the wonderful people here. I am praying each day for strength and patience and giving thanks for the gifts He has given me. The worst time in my life has become the most joyful, creative and blessed of any other. I have renewed optimism and I know that my life will no longer be ruled by the things of this world, but by the knowledge of my eternal life with Him.
Thank you Jesus.
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