Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Fairytales

I have always been inspired by Anita Baker’s song, Fairy Tales. Maybe it was because of the title, maybe becuase of the mesage that it gives. My mom used to listen to her when I was younger and misplaced her album somehow. Enjoying it so much, I added it to my collection about a year ago. That was when I really listened to the words of the song, the feelings of disappointment and despair because life did not turn out the way that she anticipated it would. In th esong, her mother had told her countless stories of love and romance, and how one day her own magic prince would come and take her away. Her reality: it did not happen and it was not going to happen. Such thinking, was not life but only, as you may have guessed it, a fairytale.
My perception of life has been the same, not just concerning romance and love, but life in general. That I would fall in love with the right man and live happily ever afer in a beautiful mansion, if you will. That I would have the perfect job that I was good at and enjoyed and make tons of money doing it. That I would live forever, and be free of all sickness and disease, ill-fortune or anything else. But like Anita, my reality too has set in, so with her I can sing
You never came to save me, you let me stand alone. Out in the wilderness, alone in the cold.
I found no magic potion, no horse with wings to fly. I found the poison apple, my destiny to die
No royal kiss could save me, no magic spell to spin, my fantasy is over, my life must now begin
My story end, as stories do, reality steps into view. No longer living life in paradise - no fairy tales
Do not misread the message tha ti am trying to convey here. I have not lost all hope, I am actually quite optimistic, maybe more so than the average person. I have just come to regretfully realize that life is not always fair; it does not always deal us the best hand. We will find that it is full of pain and hurt and the reality is that it is inevitable regardless of how you live your life. The reality is that this is our lot, our destiny.
Some would dare to point their finger at God. Since he is all powerful and all knowing, he must be the reason for our displeasure, our misfortune. How else do you explain innocent victims of natural disasters or even disasters invoked by the hands of other human beings?
As much as you may be tempted to shake your fist at him, and curse his name, wait for a second. Yes, he is all knowing and all powerful, but the root of the pain that we face day to day cannot be the cause of God but of two butt-naked people in a garden a long time ago. These two people determined the destiny of the whole earth with just one single act of disobedience. All it took was a small bite of an animal and all of the earth was cursed forever. I am not just talking about people, but I am even talking about the land, the sea, vegetation and even the animals that populate it. With one single bite of a stupid animal, everything was cursed and death became our disposition, our fate, and as much as it grieved God to lose the very beings that he created, that he loved so much, there was nothing that he could do about it. As powerful, loving, and all knowing as He is, it was our decision to turn our backs on Him and he could not intervene.
Unless, unless, he took that curse upon himself. We were destined for an eternity of death and pain unless he became the curse that we were and so he did. He sent his Son a down to the earth in the form of human form and watched him die an agonizing death on a tree just so that the very people who despised and rejected him would be granted another opportunity to live forever. He became a remedy to this curse, but only for those who trusted in Him, only for those who believed in Him. Like a remedy to Cancer or any other virus, you will only if you take the medicine, the remedy. So it is with the provision that his Son Jesus Christ gave us, there simply was no other way.
Some would question or comment, “what if I do not believe that He is the remedy. What if I do not believe that he is the only way to ensure that my soul is not cursed. That’s fine! Your disbelief or denial in the cross of Christ does not make this reality any less real, any less true. A person’s disbelief in a cure for emphysema, or cancer does not make it any less true. It would be equally foolish to think Tylenol or Ibprofen or Morphine could cure emphysema, as It is to believe that Buddha, Confucius, Mohammed, John Smith or any other god could take away the curse of sin from all of mankind as hey did not die for it.
Now I understand the cultural sensitivity that must be taken account for here. What about the people who grew up in different cultures, with worship to different gods and deities? Maybe they would serve this Jesus if they only knew. That is why it is our aim, my aim to go to the ends of the earth and preach, proclaim this message of salvation, this message of healing to every creature everywhere. I find that nothing else matters. Not fame, not fortune, not happiness. Everything else is worthless; everything else is vanity and vexation of spirit.
Outside of knowing the Lord, life just does not make sense. For the person that gets up everyday and leaves home to go to their $100,000 a year job at the cost of their family falling apart, their health failing, and their stress level rising, they must wonder what the point of all of it is. For the person of fame whose in the lime light making the big bucks because they can sing, dance, walk across a runaway, or bounce a basketball? At the end of the day as their head hits the pillow and they begin to question what happens when their beauty fades and their talents grows cold, they have to wonder in their hearts what’s the worth in what they are doing, what is the purpose. No matter how successful or unsuccessful, beautiful or ugly, healthy or ill that a person is, our fate is all the same. Because of that apple, every person when they leave this earth is faced with a startling reality—their place in eternity. It is here where we will find that the only thing that we have done on the earth that will count in eternity is if we knew the Lord or not, and not just for ourselves but if we have told other people about him. The only that God will ever ask us is what we did with his Son, Jesus Christ. Did we know and accept him? Did we testify about him and not just with our words but with our very lives?

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