The Passion Of Christ

And so we enter into Passion Week, traditionally meant to signify the last week our Lord Jesus spent on earth before he went on the cross. Its been two years now since the movie the Passion of the Christ. I remember walking out of the cinema as though it was yesterday, with the thoughts and emotions that were stirred up. Its a pity how man are all such fickle creatures. Only on sunday Bernice was remarking about how even the most real experiences of God can be forgotten in an instance. Yet we always desire to enter into His presence, partly with the hope that if we ever do encounter Him in a very real way, we would not forget Him, but be forever changed. At least, one of the more deep seated beliefs that I always clung to was that the way to beat my spiritual slump was to earnestly seek Him, because if I were to ever encounter Him face to face, I will be forever changed.

So it was with a certain ironic sense when I mused upon how it was the same Judas who had walked and slept with Jesus for three years who voluntarily betrayed the Lord, and how even someone like Peter who witnessed the transfiguration of Jesus in His full glory would deny Him not just once but three times.

I've always looked back to the first Fei Yue Mi Wu camp as the peak of my spiritual life. My prayer life was never healthier, prob because I was in the prayer ministry then. But I guess if ever I wanted a face-to-face encounter with God, that would have been the closest by a long shot. To witness and experience the reality of how God moves when we pray - if we pray according to His will - it has never been more real than that. And so that's why eight years on I can still so vividly remember so many instances of God's hand of providence upon us back then. So why is it that after such a mountain-top experience like Peter, I would choose to again sink myself back into the mire of everyday life, and let my desire for things of the heavenly kingdom be slowly choked out by the weeds of this earth?

Fickle is what we all are.

Mebbe that's why it makes sense after all that the church does nothing much except remind us in different ways of the gift of grace that we have received by the death of our Lord on the cross. For even with the same message having been droned into me for the past 26 years, I still forget to let God lead my life, then mebbe there really isn't a need at all for any secondary message that the church needs to give. Mebbe C.S Lewis was right in the Screwtape Letters when Wormwood reminds Screwtape that the way to reduce the Christian to a mere man is to let him think that Christianity is just the "same old thing", and that it ought to be "Christ plus something else".

I find myself sitting on the crossroads of my life, where I have remained for the past 5 years. And still I refuse to relinquish my life to God. I claim to want to seek God about the direction of my future, yet refuse to give up my life for Him to lead. I keep telling Him the things that I want, the list of career options I would want to consider, the list of girls out of which I would like Him to matchmake me with one, the list of ministries I am interested in serving in, the amount of time I am willing to offer Him, and mebbe most poignantly the list of things I am not willing to give up while I want to follow him.

I guess when my life becomes cluttered up by so many things, so that it becomes "Christ plus something else", Christ really becomes very very small in my life and in my eyes. He becomes so very hard to see. Cos even when I sit down to pray to Him, all I see are my problems that I can't wait to tell Him about, all my worries and concerns I can't wait to throw out in hope that I'd feel better, and all the struggles in my life that I'd hope He'd fix. And by the time I'm done with all that, I'm done with my prayers to God. And when I look back, I see how little of Christ I have in my life, in my mind and in my prayer.

The Passion of Christ. 30 years of His life was lived with the sole purpose of preparing Himself for three years of ministry, the climax to His life on earth being the suffering He is to go through for my sake. Suddenly the lyrics to the song "Above All" becomes so much more meaningful.

Crucified, laid behind a stone.
You lived to die rejected and alone
Like a rose, trampled on the ground
You took the fall
And thought of me above all

Spending 33 years on this earth that I can't bear to be in already at 26, I guess the fact that He did it all to die for me only makes me once again appreciate what the Passion Week is all about. Mebbe it really isn't about making up for the lost years. Mebbe its not about the pursuit of my lifetime goals and desires. Mebbe its not even about the unending search for a soulmate to still my restless heart.

Mebbe its about learning to think of Christ in my life, wanting Christ in my life above all.