BitterSweetLife

We discover God is no stranger to this world and we end up looking like fools when we speak about "here" as a place about which we must relay to God second-hand information about what it's "really like."

Instead, we find Jesus entering earth and navigating with breath-taking precision this place we purportedly know so well, although we stagger like drunks. Unhesitatingly, Jesus traveled Galilee with more precision than the most astute historian, with more gravity than the grittiest realist. Eschewing the available streams of Jewish revolution, he became neither an Essene hermit, nor a Pharisee politician, nor a Zealot guerrilla--he did not idolize Caesar or swear by the temple--he invented his own way, disturbingly different.

Through the dust of the roadway, the deal-cutting of merchants, the acrid smell of the crowd--Christ unswervingly made his way, carrying a challenge to every affinity group, every geopolitical entity. He said precisely what he meant to say, nailed every intended nuance, pushed every spiritual and emotional and intellectual button, and walked the perfect path, direct to the cross. In his wake, he left a society shaking with the implications of HIM.

We, who feel the compulsive need to inform God of conditions on earth, could only watch in awe the life-dance of this wholly adept human. No one has laced his shoes with such a stunning grasp of world-reality ever since.