{"id":651,"date":"2011-11-15T04:11:02","date_gmt":"2011-11-15T04:11:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/?p=651"},"modified":"2018-07-20T21:18:11","modified_gmt":"2018-07-20T21:18:11","slug":"is-jesus-big-weird-jesus-sayings-continued","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/2011\/11\/is-jesus-big-weird-jesus-sayings-continued.html","title":{"rendered":"Is Jesus Big?: Weird Jesus Sayings Continued"},"content":{"rendered":"

“…unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.\u00a0 Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”<\/em> Matthew 18:3,4<\/p>\n

“…anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.”<\/em>\u00a0 Mark 10:15, Luke 18:17<\/p>\n

Bedtime\u00a0these days\u00a0consists of\u00a0a pretty extensive routine: bath, books, then lullabies with back rubs.\u00a0 At the end of it, I turn on the hall light just outside my children’s\u00a0room to remind them that Jesus is with\u00a0them and to\u00a0ward off the monsters.<\/p>\n

Often, though,\u00a0within minutes of my leaving the room, my four-year-old will slink\u00a0out of bed, blinking and bleary-eyed, to say he’s scared.<\/p>\n

When he did this the other night, I told him what I always tell him:\u00a0 “When\u00a0you’re scared,\u00a0just let the light remind you that Jesus is with you and watching over you;” this\u00a0followed by\u00a0a little prodding back\u00a0to bed.<\/p>\n

This strategy has usually worked.\u00a0 Not this night, though.<\/p>\n

This night, when I say “Jesus is with you,” my son isn’t so easily persuaded.\u00a0 “No, he’s not,”\u00a0comes the response.<\/p>\n

“What do you mean?,” I ask.<\/p>\n

“I don’t see him,” he says.<\/p>\n

“Good point,” I am thinking to myself.\u00a0 “So what if ‘those who believe without seeing are blessed’ (John 20:29)?\u00a0 Most of the time, seeing is still\u00a0believing.\u00a0 Didn’t Jesus say, afterall, that\u00a0He brings ‘recovery of sight for the blind’ (Luke 4:18)?\u00a0 Can’t we ask Jesus\u00a0for eyes of faith?\u00a0 Can’t we ask him to help us see him?”<\/p>\n

So now I am kneeling next to my son on the bathroom floor.\u00a0 “Do you want to see Jesus?,” I ask.\u00a0 I am remembering\u00a0similar invitations issued to me as a child.\u00a0 First at the age of four by missionary parents in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: I\u00a0remember\u00a0lying on my bed looking up at the geckos on the\u00a0ceiling, wondering why I didn’t feel any different after inviting Jesus into my heart.\u00a0 I had followed directions to a tee, but nothing had happened.\u00a0 Nothing dramatic, that is.\u00a0 And I had wondered how it was that Jesus fit into my heart.\u00a0 Into such a small space like that.\u00a0 Wasn’t it claustrophobic?<\/p>\n

Then there were the many more\u00a0impassioned\u00a0pleas that followed over the years.\u00a0 Emotion-laden appeals to accept Jesus Christ as personal Savior.\u00a0 In Vacation Bible School.\u00a0 At camp.\u00a0 In the weekly Awana Club where I memorized and recited Bible verses in exchange for ribbons.\u00a0\u00a0At the\u00a0campfire.\u00a0 Over the lulling\u00a0sound of the guitar in worship.\u00a0 In\u00a0the hush of teenaged heads bowed and eyes closed (at least partially), when by way of raising our hands we\u00a0said “yes” to Jesus (or didn’t raise our hands for fear one of the\u00a0other kids\u00a0was peeking like we were).<\/p>\n

And now my son wants to see Jesus.\u00a0 “Yes,” he says, when I ask him.<\/p>\n

But how does one describe to a four-year-old what it means “to see” with the eyes of faith, I wonder.\u00a0 And now I am searching for the right words\u00a0but bumping up against\u00a0the limits of language.\u00a0 Maybe a bit like the many\u00a0people who sought to introduce me to Jesus years ago.\u00a0 Parents.\u00a0 Youth group leaders.\u00a0 Sunday school teachers.\u00a0 Maybe their experience also got lost in translation.<\/p>\n

“You can invite Jesus into your life,” I say. And then, “It’s going to take time, but more and more as you grow you’ll begin to see Jesus.”\u00a0 And as I\u00a0say this, I am almost praying\u00a0it\u00a0for him- that he would see Jesus more and more.<\/p>\n

“Sometimes you won’t see Jesus but other times you will,” I go on.\u00a0 “Like Lucy in\u00a0‘Prince Caspian.'”\u00a0 We had seen the movie a few weeks earlier.\u00a0 In it, Lucy, the youngest of the four children returning to Narnia for another adventure as “sons and daughters of Eve” and “kings and queens of Narnia,” is the first of the four to see Aslan; she alone catches fleeting glimpses which sustain her belief in the lion’s care, while her siblings remain in the dark and in disbelief for much of the movie.<\/p>\n

“Remember how sometimes Lucy sees Aslan and other times she doesn’t?,” I ask.<\/p>\n

“Uh huh.”\u00a0 Now my son is nodding his head.\u00a0 A light has turned on.\u00a0 He is smiling with recognition.<\/p>\n

“It’s like that with Jesus.\u00a0 Sometimes we see Him and other times we don’t.\u00a0 But just because we don’t see Him doesn’t mean He’s not there. He is still there even when we can’t see Him.”<\/p>\n

Now my son is smiling.\u00a0 The crinkles on his forehead have disappeared.\u00a0 He is heading back to bed.<\/p>\n

“Mommy, is Jesus big?”<\/p>\n

Pause.\u00a0 I\u00a0am guessing that\u00a0Jesus was probably no more than 5’6″ if that. \u00a0(Most men in first-century Palestine would have been of average stature, right?)<\/p>\n

“Yes,” I answer.\u00a0 “Jesus is very big.”<\/p>\n

“Bigger than Daddy?,” my son is asking as he climbs the bunk bed ladder,\u00a0then pulls the comforter up to his chin.<\/p>\n

“Definitely bigger\u00a0than Daddy!,” I exclaim, as I tuck him in one last time turning to go.<\/p>\n

Maybe Jesus’ “bigness” is what I had missed in all of those “come to Jesus” moments.\u00a0 In my Kuala Lumpur bedroom staring at the geckos.\u00a0 In Awana Club and at church camp.\u00a0 Jesus had to be small to fit into my heart.\u00a0 And he had to fit just the way I was told he\u00a0would fit- as if by\u00a0some magic formula I could ask Jesus into my heart and he would appear, taking residence in my heart and never leaving.<\/p>\n

But this Jesus wasn’t the big Jesus I as a child\u00a0intuitively hoped for.\u00a0 He wasn’t a powerful, majestic beast with a breathtaking roar, untameable and free.\u00a0 He was too small for all that.\u00a0 “Inviting Jesus into your heart” often could just as well have been like saying the right, magic word to a genie in a bottle, and then voila, or poof- there this little Jesus was, a bit like the handle that you mechanically twist to make a jack-in-the-box jump.\u00a0 Always manipulable.\u00a0 Never unpredictable.<\/p>\n

And isn’t it interesting that with time, as we become more “grown-up,” the Jesus we\u00a0believe\u00a0in can tend\u00a0to\u00a0shrink?\u00a0 So that he becomes more like garnish on our plate rather than the real food?\u00a0 So that the One whom the apostle Paul describes as “before all things” and in Whom “all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17) is little more than cheap, chintzy decoration on already full plates?<\/p>\n

Yet Jesus is saying here that we need to become like children to enter the kingdom of God.\u00a0\u00a0Which could just as well be another way of saying that we need to remember that Jesus is big and that Jesus is everywhere- even as He is seated at the right hand of God. \u00a0This Jesus is the One who contains all of the pain and glory of the world. This Jesus is the very “heart of the world” as the Swiss theologian, Hans Urs Von Balthasar, describes in his lyrical tribute to Christ.<\/p>\n

Which means that\u00a0we don’t have to carry Jesus with us: we\u00a0don’t have to tuck him away near our left ventricle or hide Him\u00a0under an aortic valve- as if the onus were on us to coax Jesus to stay around in our soul’s living room, as if Jesus’ presence ultimately depended on our<\/em> words and actions.<\/p>\n

And we don’t have to\u00a0bring Jesus to people, either, as Rob Bell writes in Velvet Elvis<\/em>.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because Jesus is already there!\u00a0 He is there whether or not we see Him.\u00a0 All we really need to do is ask Jesus to give us eyes to see Him\u00a0and then look for Him.<\/p>\n

It’s a bit like my two-year-old daughter when she reads her favorite book, Curious George<\/em>.\u00a0 On every page, there is always\u00a0George, the mischievous monkey, into this and into that.\u00a0 George at the train station.\u00a0 George at the farm.\u00a0 George at the toy store.\u00a0 And when we read together,\u00a0all my daughter does is point and exclaim,\u00a0“George!”\u00a0 On literally every page she points and exclaims, “George!”<\/p>\n

And that’s really all we need to do, too.\u00a0 When we see Jesus, we point.\u00a0 We point and we exclaim, “Jesus!”\u00a0 Like a child over her story book or in a make-believe place called “Narnia.”\u00a0 And chances are that the more we find ourselves doing this simplest of things, the more we’re pointing and exclaiming in wonder\u00a0at all of the places Jesus shows up on the pages of our story, the more\u00a0we’ll know that we’re in God’s kingdom.\u00a0 We’ll know we’re in that place where God is reconciling all created things in heaven and on earth to Himself (Colossians 1:20).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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