Day 149: Searching for Jesus

"You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of me.  But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life."  John 5:39-40

This reprimand from Jesus is pretty harsh, but there is an important message that will bring us closer to him.

A page from the Cordúa cookbook

This reprimand reminds me of how cooking works.  There are countless cookbooks in circulation.  Even some high end restaurants will put out books full of their own recipes, some of which must seem to be secret.  And they'll even be in plain sight, where somebody could turn to a specific page and take a picture and have the recipe, for free!  But, no matter the number of resources available, there is still a thriving restaurant industry, and many restaurants that have their own recipes out there are still in business.  Why is that?

Well, none of us are using those recipes!  None of us are taking the time to actually cook them.  Even worse, we don't even know how to do half of the things that are described in them.  Blanch a chicken?  Stir-fry?  Julienne carrots?  Sous vide cooking?  If we learned how to do all of these things, we would no longer need cookbooks.  We would be chefs, rendering both restaurants and cookbooks useless.

But that's where Jesus' reprimand comes in.  We can comb through every single page of the bible, read every single commentary on the bible, learn about every single tradition, but we'd be nothing if we don't go to Jesus ourselves.  The bible testifies of Jesus.  We have so many things to learn about Jesus.  And, all the scriptures point out a focal point of Jesus: Jesus is love.  We have to love if we are going to follow Jesus.  We can talk all we want about the bible, but if we don't put any of the words into practice, we're going to have to keep going back to the same chapters, the same verses, hoping that maybe another time we will learn ourselves.  Our bible is our recipe, our instruction manual.  And there is a lot in there!  We might not be able to put every single thing into practice in our lifetime, but if we continue to put more and more of it into practice everyday, then maybe, just maybe, we will start getting closer to Jesus.  It will be difficult, but Jesus has shown that every step of the way will be glorious.  We will see miracles happen, we will see joy, we will see the Kingdom of God materializing in our midst.  When we love, we will have the eternal life that is promised us by God.