I was over on my friend Nathan's blog reading about his thoughts on a family who found the face of Jesus in a jar lid.

I won't post a link to Nathan's blog because I am not sure if he would want me too. 
But I will say he expressed some interesting thoughts on the subject that certainly got me thinking- some in particular about how such thoughts that God could or would appear in the Marmite cheapens Grace.

Claire Allen, the lady who found the face in the Marmite says this;

You can read the full story

HERE

Like it or not, this woman thought Jesus was appearing to her in a jar of Marmite. 
Whether it does indeed cheapen the act of the death and resurrection on the cross and make grace cheap is a discussion I will leave to me mate Nathan.

The thing that strikes me most about this story and many others like it, is that often people are just waiting to see Jesus/God in their everyday lives.

We are a culture and a people who love signs and symbols.

Not just religious ones either.

We love them about our sports, our friends, our love lives. 




This story reminds me of Paul after seeing an altar to an unknown God took it as an opportunity to preach the gospel, the true gospel of grace to the people of Athens.

As cheesy and as kitsch Jesus appearing in Marmite might be to the Christian world at large.

Could it be another opportunity to help point others to an
authentic
experience of Jesus?





Do you believe God could or would enable a picture of Jesus to appear like this?

It has come to my attention over the past couple of years that my heart has been very small.



It is not a very pleasant thought really, to think that I am the possessor of a heart not big enough to embrace anyone but me.

It has only needed to be small because until recently all it held was my own thoughts and opinions.

To make matters worse sometimes I would catch  myself seeking out other people with small hearts who shared my ideas and opinions.

It made me feel better about my own condition, and if I got really lucky, I would find that some of them had even smaller hearts than mine, and so for a little while I got to feel especially good about myself.

People with small hearts are all to quick to tell you how to think, how to behave, how to act, what to think and what to feel.

Small hearted people rarely take chances and they are quite protective of their little hearts.

They are often guided by fear and thus close themselves off to anything strange or different from themselves.



One day I noticed my small heart was making me sick.  It was not big enough to pump the life giving love of the Lord around my own body, let alone on to anyone else.

So I started to have a look at this so called 'savior' of mine they call Jesus.

His heart was wide wide open and as big as the noon day sun.

There was nobody who he was afraid of being with, nobody whose opinions where too concrete for him, nobody too dirty for him to associate with and nobody too sinful for him to break bread with.



He was so secure in who he was that it did not matter what anybody else was like he could love them freely without bias.

I started to look at these verses from 1 John 4

¹⁷ Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world. ¹⁸ There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love. ¹⁹ We love Him^[b] because He first loved us.


And I begun to realize that all of those people I was locking out of my 'small' heart I was locking out because I feared them.

I feared how they may think differently theologically from me.

I feared their sexuality.

I feared their worship styles.

I feared their political persuasions.

I feared their life styles.

I feared their different bible translations.

I feared the churches they attended.

I feared the music they liked.

The clothes they wore.

The piercing they had.

The tattoo's they toted.

My heart was soooooo very full of fear that there was not once inch of room for love!



So I made a resolution to let LOVE cast out FEAR.

Perfect love, the love of Christ.

The love that says, I may not agree with you nor you with me- I love you.
I would not make the same choices as you make- I love you.
I have different interpretations- I love you.

I may stuff up, I may get it wrong, but I will allow my heart to be wide enough to let you in and maybe we will learn more about love together.



I can feel my heart getting wider.

 Each day God shows me something else that I fear.
Each day we wrestle about it until I eventually give in.  Some days the battles are harder and fiercer than others.  Some times my battles  last through the nights and into other days as well.




Sometimes I have to go back to the red letters in my bible and look exactly how Jesus loved, because sometimes my human mind has corrupted my thinking, because sometimes love is tough.  And Jesus always loved when it was tough.

And he always hated when it was the right thing and time to hate.

He has that right. 
He was perfect- perfect love, without fear.





I wanna be like that.

Not perfect.

Just in love.