Why I follow Jesus

Here's a piece that I threw together during one of our Friday Office Morning Prayer Sessions.

I follow Jesus because he is fearless.

Most of our world runs on fear. Fear of losing out. Fear of not having enough. Fear of expectations, fear of the absence of expectations. Fear of setting a precedence expectation at one point, and not being able to follow through. Our economy has been built around fear - job security, career advancement, being the "market leader". Whole industries built around them - what if you get sick? What if you lose your figure? What if you lose your wealth? What if you lose your mansion in heaven?

Fear is the only power we've been taught to wield. Everything from boundaries, public/private space, to surveillance cameras, and contracts with dire consequences. And while everything is good for something, I can't help believing that there has got to be another way to keep the world turning.

Jesus presents another way with the basis that there is a God who loves, who creates, who cares, who provides, who is intimately interested in the goodness and welfare of humanity as a whole. There is a fundamental understanding that if God provides for the lilies in the valley and the birds of the sky, there is more than enough for all creation!

Hence, all that we do needn't be in the posture of needy grabbing, but in a posture of overabundance and generosity.

We have seen glimpses of this power the in the Japanese Kamikaze's laying down their lives for the nation, in Ghandi and his stance of non-violence, Mother Teresa and her work with the poor. We see this in the way a mother loves her children, the way a father lays his life down for his sons, with little expectation of rebate.

Jesus proves this by first laying down his life in complete security of the Creator, only to be given back with the glory and majesty of the highest power of the universe.

That is why I follow Jesus. Because he threw a spanner into the machine of fear, and for a moment in history, it ground to a halt... Because the effects of that event still ripples through and influences the course of our existence, because he is the only solution that I can think of that comes close to a whole humanity.