Our Mistakes Are Burned Up

Jackson Dias

Thomas Edison lost two million dollars worth of equipment and the record of much of his life's work when the Edison Industries were destroyed by fire in 1914. The next morning, walking among the ashes of so many of his hopes and dreams, the 67 year old Edison said, "There is a great value in distress. All ur mistakes are burned up. Thank God, we can start anew."

It is this Jesus, this God-Man, who alone can turn life into a gay and glorious adventure, all the more exciting because it is hazardous as well as satisfying. To take Jesus into your factory or into your office is to see everyone and everything in a new light and in a new way. Jesus beside you at the kitchen sink, Jesus beside you as you sit at a crowded counter eating your sandwich or drinking your beer, Jesus beside you in your friendships and your family relationships. This is the meaning of the Resurrection: Jesus in the world, but not of it. Jesus in your world hallowing the homely and sanctifying the secular.

But who is to speak for the Jesus who is now and here? How to communicate this tremendous truth to those who have never heard it or who have heard it and not understood? The only authority for this sort of practical Christianity is the Bible.

Esoteric speculations as to the nature and location of God give no kind of help in a world in which the power of the Gospels i Mark tells us that s needed as never before. People must be told the home truths of Christianity. They need to be reminded that Jesus said, "I am come that they might have life and have it more abundantly."

Jesus is their man, for Jesus said "Yes" to life. He came with good news, and it wasn't the high-ups in the Sanhedrin who ran to hear it, but the poor, the sick, the social outcast and the moral untouchable. Mark tells us that the common people heard him gladly.

In the Jesus of orthodox Christianity that gives shape and purpose to lives which, without him, would be mere existence.