Day 159: Who Sinned?

And His disciples asked Him, saying, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"  Jesus answered, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him."  John 9:2-3

 Jesus has told us the same things in many different ways, yet we still fail to accept the message.

This above passage talks about judging.  We are called not to judge.  We should accept this as the end of the story, but we always want more.  At least, the actions that I observe both around me and even in me show that we all want more.  We want a better explanation on how not to judge.  We want things to be made plain and simple enough.  Or so we say.

In this event, Jesus adds an important detail: our judging prevents us from seeing the works of God.  When we judge, we start to place ourselves on a pedestal constructed of pride.  In fact, we attempt to build a throne that equals God's with our own pride.  However, we end up being the blind people whenever we do so.

Whenever we decide to judge, we put our minds and our whole bodies' resources into judging rather than helping and loving.  The disciples, rather than trying to heal the blind or help him at the very least, decide to judge, forgetting everything else that they had been taught.  In the same way, we abandon everything good, everything loving, when we focus our attention on judging.  Rather than going out and helping others, we end up hurting both ourselves and those in need.  Whenever we don't show love to those in need, we divide the Kingdom of God and destroy it.  That's not what we are called to do.

We are called to unite.  We are called to love.  We are called to be God's Kingdom on earth.

Day 151: Feeding on the Word

"Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him."  John 6:27

This is a great command, but it does require us to think a bit.

Of course, we need food to live.  We get hungry and need to fulfill that need on a regular basis so that we can continue to be healthy.  However, we can't let that pursuit take over our lives to the point we can't do anything else.  When we devote our lives just to the pursuit of money, we begin to lose our soul.  We no longer have the time to contemplate the beauty of God, and we start to turn towards other riches in order to fill up our spiritual hunger.  We will turn to other speakers, other books, other gods, other idols, just to satiate our hunger for the moment.

So, Jesus is telling us to follow him at every moment so that we can continue to mature spiritually.  We need to grow stronger by nourishing our souls with the good bread that comes from Jesus.  And what is that bread, exactly?  Well, to start, it is feasting on every word that Jesus proclaims, since he is, after all, the word incarnate.  Now, that can seem to be quite a bit for us to do, since we would have an entire bible to keep up with, learning every single word.  When I was pursuing my English degree in particular, I had to spend lots of time with the pieces of literature I had to discuss and/or write about.  I had to make sure that I understood what the author/poet was communicating to me, and I had to be sure that I was aware of all the things that were going on, particularly with the language.  This took quite a toll on my ability to focus on other things, particularly my music, which was my other degree I was pursuing simultaneously.  I can't imagine how hard it must be to learn all of the bible well enough to say that one is full off the word.

But this is where the earthly and heavenly food come together.  Just as Jesus united both the heavenly and the earthly through his incarnation, he does the same in his preaching.  He has taught us all about the Kingdom of Heaven, and he has even told us what it's like.  The neat thing is that it's something that we can bring about on earth, today, right now.  When we dedicate our lives to following Jesus, we learn how to become more loving towards God and towards everybody that's around us.  Each time that we learn to grow in this love, every piece of scripture will serve as a reinforcement rather than a new command.  As we continue on our journey towards Jesus, we will be able to focus our whole lives towards him, not abandoning all of those around us.  We will be the ones to prepare the world for the Kingdom of Heaven.  By feeding on the word of Christ, we will be able to serve that same word to so many others, so that they can start joining us in the greater community of heaven on earth.

Day 142: Examples of Light

"This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.  If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.  But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin."  1 John 1:5-7

This passage should give us all hope.

It first defines how we are to live our lives.  We need to make sure that our faith manifests itself in our lives through our actions.  We teach the best and spread the Gospel the best through our actions, for that is how others can conceptualize things.  Over the past week now, I have made many Chinese dumplings (餃子 and 小籠包).  I'm a guy who likes to learn things from books, and that works quite well with most recipes I've encountered.  However, the trademark of dumplings is their pleats.  I have read countless instructions on how to perform them, but they all turned out to be disastrous and plain odd.  But, after watching one video, I was able to understand how to fold them properly.  After a few dumplings for practice (and eating, of course) I feel that I have made quite some progress.

The way we live our lives becomes a light for many who are around us.  If we demonstrate our faith, just like a video, people will be able to understand all that they have heard from Christianity.  In fact, we too will begin to understand the bible and teachings better when we live our faith.

The latter part of this passage is what should give us all hope.  It says that when we live our lives faithfully, we will have fellowship not just with God, but with everybody around us.  Now, it is amazing enough to have fellowship with God, but it must be reassuring to be in the company of the many faithful who are walking in the light.  People who live around us, going through many of our same challenges, should make us feel closer to God.  The reason why we'll be in good company is because we will all be heading in the same direction, albeit from different starting points.  When we wander without God, we will end up in so many places that are unfulfilling.  Many will actually find themselves heading backwards towards destruction.  But, when we walk towards and in the light of God, we will find all of those who are walking in the same direction.  Those people will be able to dust off your shoes, provide you with water, hand you a coat if you need one, and will welcome you to the glory of God.  We need to provide that fellowship, because it is our duty as Christians.  The light of God is God's unconditional love for all of us.  When we provide that fellowship, we will see the light grow not only around us, but also in us.

Day 139: Accepting Change

"He who rejects instruction hates himself, but he who gives heed to reproofs loves his soul."  Proverbs 15:37

This comparison cannot be any more extreme than this: hate and love.

Why is this necessary?  Well, if we think about this, it applies to so many different aspects of our lives.  In a general sense, we need to be willing to learn from everything, especially our own mistakes.  We can go forth in our lives doing things the same way we've always done them, but if that is harmful, we only bring ourselves further and further into damage.  When we accept change in our lives, we can turn away from anything that harms us and become better people.

In a spiritual sense, this is important because it is our whole life we are talking about.  Jesus speaks to us every single day.  It's only when we accept the change that Jesus calls for us to do that we will be able to become better people.  Accepting that change will involve not just a confession by word, but also a change in how we live our lives.  We need to live out that change.

In school, I was taught that doing drugs was bad for the body.  It's bad because each use will continue to damage the body, and if done enough times (the amount depending on the individual) it would lead to an addiction, which was very difficult to turn back from.  We learned to point our judging fingers towards those who used drugs.  That's an extreme case, but it still explains this proverb to me, because it's very easy to look at other people and see how they're damaging their lives with their own habits.  We can see when our friends are in destructive relationships, dead end jobs, or making bad decisions for their health.  We say to ourselves, "they must truly hate themselves."  This proverb, though, calls us to point that finger back at ourselves.  We need to investigate all that we do.  Are we willing to accept change?  It's easy for us to point out that necessity in others, and since we already can, can we do that to ourselves?  Can we truly live out that change?

The only way we can love our soul is by accepting and living the change that Jesus calls us to do.  It will involve a commitment, but we have already made that commitment in our baptism that we remember every time another member is added to our great family of baptized people.  We have to remember that we are in this world, constantly resisting the devil, fighting the good fight.  We need to stop hating ourselves and, instead, start bettering ourselves.

Day 138: Leading with Love

"The ways of righteous people are acceptable before the Lord, and through them even enemies become friends."  Proverbs 15:32

This proverb is inspiring to me, and the first thing that comes to mind is: lead by example.

We are to lead by example because that's the way to establish a way or a path.  Paths are formed by lots of effort.  It can be over the span of ages, with the feet, hooves, and paws of many trodding on the same path, or it can be made with the effort of one or more workers making the path.  The important thing to remember, though, is that all our examples should be things that will bring others towards God.

Indeed, the proverb says, "through them even enemies become friends," which means that there is a clear path that leads to righteousness.  And, in Godly terms, we understand that our notion of righteousness involves transforming our lives to bring us closer to becoming manifestations of the unconditional love that God has for all of us.  This means that we need to put aside all our prejudices along our journey of purification.  It's not enough just to confess with our mouths and words.  We need to live our faith.

Leading by example will involve lots of effort on our part, especially because we have to know where we ourselves are going.  We can figure this out with our prayer and our bible reading.  We will find out that God is always calling upon us to love our neighbors.  And, when we truly adopt this principle of love, we will start to bring others into our community purely by our example of love.  Leading by example doesn't just mean to teach others about our ways.  Leading by example means that we will lead ourselves forward with this example.  It'll be a process, but it will be rewarding for us and for all those around us.

Day 103: Hear Him

While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were fearful as they entered the cloud.  And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, "This is My beloved Son.  Hear Him!"  Luke 9:34-35

I find the Transfiguration to be something very confusing.  The description we get in the Gospels doesn't seem to warrant so much to make an important feast day out of it in the church calendar.  Perhaps, when I compare it to the Passion, the Nativity, or the end times, this description pales in comparison.

However, every time I come back to reading about it, I feel that God speaks to me in a different way.  A detail that stuck out to me this time around was the passage I copied above.  The disciples whom Jesus had brought along for this event were filled with so many questions, as can be evidenced by Peter's suggestion to build tabernacles for the three men.  In addition to that, they were frightened.  Their teacher's face had just started glowing!

Despite all this uncertainty, though, they entered the cloud.  And, as they entered, they began to receive the gift of understanding.  Jesus is one with God.  In the same way, we should take this approach to our own lives.  We will encounter so many different things where we won't know all the answers.  However, when we take the leap forward, even with our doubts, our questions, our fears, we will get the answer.  God is wherever we are, but we need to receive God.  I find that the physical church building can be seen as a sort of parallel to the cloud.  Within the church's walls, we hear the voice of God in the form of song, prayer, and scripture.  We can also look at our own moments of deep meditation as entering the cloud - the cloud of our own souls.  Within our meditations, we can hear the voice of God.  Another parallel of the cloud is the bible.  When we open up the covers, we can start to receive the revelation of God.  And, each time that we receive the revelations, we understand the same message:  "Jesus is my beloved son.  Hear him!"

Day 028: Steadfast Beliefs

"Instruction guards righteous ways of life, but instruction incapable of criticism goes astray." Proverbs 10:18

This proverb suggests a narrative that seems to be making its rounds in this political season.  In a debate or a press conference, someone poses a question to a politician, and that politician, in turn, dodges the question entirely.

Another example is when gay men (or women as well, I'm sure) who keep their homosexuality to themselves, finding partners here and there for one night stands on mobile apps or websites, blatantly reject their being not straight.  They can be politicians who vote against all pro-LGBT measures but still maintain their app accounts.  They can be activists who openly condemn the LGBT community but still have their man of the night.

We are scared by our own beliefs, but we don't want to be challenged either, for that would require us to humble ourselves from being masters, sages, or teachers to becoming students, apprentices, or babies.  But, as Christians, we have a great example of what we are supposed to do.

Jesus was not at all afraid of his message or his mission.  He talked to all the chief priests, church leaders, and scribes about all things religion.  He talked before multitudes about all the things that are supposed to be happening.  He explained everything to his disciples, correcting them when they went astray.  He took all of these teachings straight to the cross - death - the ultimate criticism.  But, he rose, and his teachings are still relevant to this day.

This proverb calls us to listen, to learn, to investigate.  When we don't listen, we find that we are alone in our thoughts, hating the world around us for not understanding.  When we don't learn, we can take our own thoughts and bring them into some radical conclusions - some of which can be very destructive to ourselves and to our world around us.  When we don't investigate, we don't understand why we even believe what we do in the first place.

We need to take all this into account, so that in the face of criticism, we can remain resilient.  We need to listen to God, to learn from God, to investigate God.  God is willing to teach us.  Are we willing to learn?