Christ Was Love

 I found one of my favorite Christmas Stories and it is copyrighted so I added a link to the story.  I first read it in an email but I try to honor the copyright of those stories that are listed that way. 

http://www.share-christmas.com/stories/Christwas/

Oh Holy Night  Martina McBride

I also wanted to add my own thoughts on Christ.  Kind of long and not really Christmasy.  If you read my book you will recognize the writing since this is from my book We Are One.

Jesus Christ, My Savior

I have hesitated sharing my belief in Jesus Christ because from the few times I have talked about it to people, they felt confused by how I see Him.  I know that artist around the world try to show that Christ is deity by painting Him slightly isolated, brightly lit, and pristine.  I have no intention to imply that He is anything less than this.  My definition of Christ is more than this.  If you think about a shepherd looking for lost lambs, the shepherd does not come back neat and tidy with a perfectly clean lamb on his shoulders.  Lost lambs are stuck in muddy waters, caught in the brambles, or hidden amongst treacherous cliffs.  For the shepherd to extricate the lamb he is going to get dirty, scratched, and bruised extricating the sheep from its perilous position.  My picture of Christ is such an image with a triumphant smile, and the lost lamb on His shoulders with no thought as to the damage to Himself to retrieve the lost lamb.   

I was once asked, “Why did Christ need to suffer in Gethsemane?”  My thought was that He needed to go to Hell and back so He would know where to find me.  Because of His suffering I can never say, “Christ does not understand my pain.”  Any other person that has not experienced what I have, I can say you don’t understand my pain.  Christ has suffered more than I can comprehend.  Christ understands my pain.  He understands my grief.  He understands my fear.  One of my deterrents from committing suicide was my belief that I would have to come before my Savior and tell him that Earth life was too hard.  He knows what man is capable of doing to one another.  I would feel so small before His presence, if I had to tell Him I ended my life because life is too painful. 

Christ is the center of my life.  He didn’t stop bad things from happening; He helped me to survive the bad things that others did.  I am blessed daily in so many ways, many little things that let me know that He is aware of me.  The actions of others He does not prevent.  I believe this is because we are each given agency to choose how we will act and He does not take that away.  I believe that any mess created by human behavior Heavenly Father with Jesus Christ can create something good out of the negative.  A simple comparison is manure nurtures flowers. Oversimplified by far, but it does give a general idea of something good from something that can smell so bad. Through the bad things, I never walk alone.  I sometimes feel alone, but if I can start a prayer in my heart I will feel His love.  The poem “Footprints In the Sand” by Mary Stevenson illustrates this feeling. When I look at my life and I seem to see only one set of foot prints that is when He carried me.

He is also why I can be around people from my past and present that have hurt me.  People are human and make mistakes.  I am going to get hurt.  I have been told that I should forgive and forget.  But if I do this I won’t learn, I will be hurt the same way again.  I do believe that I can forgive and let Christ deal with the rest.  I can learn to protect myself from hurtful people.  Some people I can negotiate a different relationship, others are just the way they are and I decide if I want to be around them, then there is a small group that their intent is to harm others, I stay away.  The man that hurt me as a child fits in this last category.  I learned along my life path that if I don’t forgive it is like taking rat poison, and hoping the other person will die.  So, how do I forgive this man?  The damage he did is extreme.  I came to a peaceful place by knowing two things.  One, he is dead and can no longer hurt other children.  The other is that I can heal from the damage.  If he repents, the memories I have will be taken care of by Christ.  If he does not repent, Christ will stand beside me as I will be a witness in the final judgment as to what he did.  Christ will decide his punishment not me.  I do believe that it was just that the man did spend time in jail for what he did to another child.  The laws of the land to protect children are to be upheld.  I am not sorry he was imprisoned.  I figure that was time when he couldn’t hurt more children.  I do not know his emotional state, or have any understanding why he did what he did.  I only know that if Christ can forgive him his sins, then I have the same opportunity of forgiveness.  I know first hand man’s inhumanity to man.  I also know first hand Christ’s love for me.