The image

Pictures of Jesus abound on facebook.  Most of them resemble the devotional pictures my mother's parents hung on their wall.  Devotional portraits of a pale young man in longish hair looking serene and solemn against a pastel backdrop.  Line drawings of a sickly looking fellow, his head crowned with thorns.  A lanky berobed figure standing outside a door, knocking with a tentative, one-knuckled tap.

Many people find such images inspirational.  To the extent such pictures can be helpful in moving hearts to love and honor towards the Jesus of scripture, I am glad that they exist.  Somehow, most such pictures do not have that kind of impact on me. 

I don't know what Jesus looked like, so I can't feel quite comfortable with most pictoral representations.  No human being alive on this planet has seen him.  No human being who has ever wielded paint to depict him has seen him.  I am convinced that the most masterful images created by human hands could only fall far short of the reality of who Jesus is.  At best, they attempt to represent something that even the best artist could not have captured, not even if he had both the best tools ever conceived by man.  Not even if he had endless time to observe Christ himself at his work. 

But perhaps its just as well that pictures designed for devotional purposes are not staggering works of art.  It would be so easy for human beings to confuse the image with the reality, and direct their worship towards an object made by men rather than the Creator who made mankind.  To have real value, a picture of Jesus would have to draw you beyond its visual impact to contemplation of the spiritual significance of Jesus' life.

For such a purpse, the best images of Christ that I ever encountered were also the simplest.  They were found in a translation of the New Testament called "Good News For Modern Man."  My maternal grandparents kept a copy in their home, and when I visited them as a very young girl, I would sit on their patchwork quilt sofa reading the gospel accounts and examining the pictures.  It fascinated me how much the artists could convey in such simple line drawings.  Usually, facial features were absent or merely suggested.  Even the human shapes were composed of mere lines that subtly indicated gender, height, posture, gesture... but no identifying detail.

For a bookish child with a big imagination, such abstract representations were ideal.  I couldn't have explained it at the time, but these visual symbols were really just one step away from the verbal representations.  They reinforced the words of the stories I read.  The Lord Jesus was shown with strong vertical lines indicating his supreme authority.  Gentle curves pictured his arm reaching out to heal or to comfort.  Without gore, the reality of the crucifixion was still painful and weighty enough for a child to grasp in the sagging bulk of a human form stretched and straining against his human weight and the unyielding crossbar.  They helped make the words of the story more real to a child of 5 or 6 without rooting me to unnecessary visual details.  They made me hungry to understand what Jesus was really like.

Of course no humanly designed image ever satisfies that hunger.  But the Word of God does. 

The simple images and ideas that caught my attention as a child in my grandparents' home did not fully penetrate for a long time.  They gave way first to my own crude notions, as I remade Christ in my own image, turning him into someone I could relate to and appreciate.  It was only when I truly understood my own sin that the full glory of Jesus Christ could be realized for me.  Once again, that child-like hunger to know Jesus was awakened.  But this time, I had the best portrait possible for defining the infinite:  God's own self-revelation in scripture.

Now when I want to know better what Jesus is like, what pleases him, how he approaches weakness, sin, trials, love, and joy, I go first to the source.  Only an infinite wisdom can adequately reveal its own complexities to finite minds.  This is, I suppose, why YHWH first forbade images to his chosen people.  No human conception could ever reveal his image as perfectly as God's own word.

How I got here

You could say that I followed my heart, and it would be true.

Straight and narrow ways are confining.  I figured that I could chart my own course, and would naturally become a brilliant success.  Instead, I found myself bumbling down well-trodden paths, unable to even see what kept tripping me up.  I messed up my thinking, my relationships, my work, making mistake after mistake in spite of every warning sign and every advantage that should have helped me choose better.

Then something awful happened--a worse tragedy than I could have imagined.  I was told the baby I was carrying would not live to be born.  Nothing could have prepared me for this.  I knew that I wasn't able to deal with this on my own resources.  My husband to be, my parents, and my friends said and did what they could to offer comfort, but were, like me, helpless to fix the problem .  My physicians offered no good options.  I was left with no answers, no hope, except one.

You could never have told me back then that facing the possible loss of my first-born would become the best thing that ever happened to me.  But when all earthly hopes fled, I was driven to my knees. 

I did not dare pray for miracles.  Others did on my behalf, and I am forever grateful for that, but I knew I didn't deserve any special treatment from God.  I had stopped my ears, closed my eyes, and walked away from him.  I was continually ignoring his blessings and his counsel.  All I could ask of God was the strength to get through this pain and loss. 

Jesus gave me what I asked for, and so much more. 

 

"All her stories are about..."

"... how badly people treat her."  I blinked, uncertain how to respond.  It seemed a rather harsh thing to say, but having listened to the lady in question on more than one occasion, it was hard to disagree with the assessment. 

I  did not intend my silence to signify agreement.  A perceptive woman of many years experience observing people should not be lightly contradicted.  The clear pattern of behavior was aptly described.  No conclusion was made about character.  The observation was not meant as judgment on personal worth.  Yet I could not comfortably agree.  Not with the memories of my own "poor me" stories nagging at the edges of my conscience.  So I let the matter pass without comment.

Weeks or months later, a similar turn of phrase compelled my attention.  This time, the subject was a woman less well known to me.  The speaker said of her, "All her stories are about how she set some slob straight."

How many stories like that have I heard?  "Boy, I told him!"  "I really put her in her place."  Sometimes such a story, told by someone I like and admire, almost makes me want to cheer.  Sometimes it even makes me envious.  If only I could come up with such clever replies.  If only I were bold enough to tell it like it is, right to his face.  If only I could come off so well in a battle of wits.

But of course, such a victory really gains nothing.  I know from experience that the person on the losing side doesn't usually come away with admiration for the verbal bully.  Rarely do I learn anything from a verbal smack-down.  Lasting, positive change from such encounters is rarer still.  So any story that centers on a display of my superior intellect mostly demonstrates my own pride and arrogance.  I am ashamed to say, I have told more than my share of this kind of story, too.

If someone were to analyze my speech by the point of my stories, what would they find?  Would their conclusions match my flattering self-image?  What are all *my* stories about?  What do I *want* them to be about?  What would be the best, most useful thing for me to tell people? 

I wish that I could say, right now, that the title of this blog is already true.  Because I know beyond doubt that the very best I have to offer anyone has nothing to do with my own talent, or suffering, or intelligence, or character, or compassion, or anything that springs naturally from my own heart.  Trust me, in 40 years of life, I have never produced anything of value apart from God's grace shown by Jesus Christ's sacrificial love on my behalf.   Anything good in my heart and life is a result of the Holy Spirit working in me to make me more like my lord and savior, Jesus.

But since so far my stories tend to be self-centered, self-indulgent, and self-promoting far more often than not, may God grant that this blog will help me practice telling stories with the right focus.  Jesus has worked so many wonders in my life already, and this one is well within the boundaries of his will as expressed in scripture. 

Lord, I turn my story over to you.  May it be to your Glory.