your God has anointed you with the oil of gladness…,” (Palms 457).

Today, we live in a world of impressive technology and advanced science.  Although there still remains a lot to be uncovered, we as a civilization have already gained a great deal of knowledge.  There is not much that we can’t do.  But because of our natural instinct to learn, to discover, to push mankind’s own limits we have often ventured into the realms of God.  We are either trying to be God by tampering with things like cloning, or we are trying to say that He never existed by using science to disprove anything that was ever said or recorded of God’s actions in our civilizations existence.  The battle between God and science has existed for many thousand years, and both sides have very staunch advocates.

Being a person of science, I can understand the intrigue in finding the answers to what we don’t know, like the creation of our planet and of our universe.  I can also appreciate all the scientific answers we discover through our deep research and elaborate studies.  But as a person of faith, I also believe that God does exist.  I believe that the answers are neither all on one side nor on the other.  Instead, I believe that it is a combination of both.  Yes, the scientific explanation of the big bang is correct, but something was behind the entire picture causing each event to occur.  And I believe that something is God.  After all, what other great being or thing could make such grand things happen.  What could have the hands and insight to create things of great complexity and intricate details?  What can create such beautiful swirls of colored gas and explosions of massive proportions?  Yes, science has theories to explain all that, but then behind science who/what is there to make science happen?  It is all too big to be just one gigantic coincidence, a coincidence that can pass through time.  That almost sounds too stupid to say.

If we can allow ourselves to believe in wizardry, fait, psychic powers, and alien life forms, why can’t we allow ourselves to believe in God?  Maybe God doesn’t exist in the human form that we are accustomed to believing.  Maybe that is why we have not seen Him.  If you have ever looked at the cosmos and see all its wonders and beauty it is almost impossible to think that science just happened by it self.  Something that grand could not be explained away by science alone.  If it were so, we would have almost all the answers by now.  There would not be things that we would just cast away as the unexplainable.  Our problem still is that we lack faith.  Like the disciple Thomas, we need to see and feel hard cold evidence before we can believe.  Blessed is he who has not seen but yet believe.

so that I may joyfully embrace the divine life you give.”

Picture this story in the privacy of your minds eye.  It starts out something like this….

A little girl about 4 years old is walking along a dusty dirt road with Jesus hand in hand.  Around them there are crowds of people; some were selling goods, others buying goods, and others like them, were just walking along the dirt road to nowhere.  The two were talking about the child’s troubles and how it was weighing her down.  Jesus could feel her sadness and suggested that they rest at a bench ahead of them for a while to talk.  He placed the little girl on his lap, cradling her as she continued to cry out to him.  She said, “Lord, please take away this cross from me.  I’ve always been faithful and ready to do your will whenever you’ve called on me in the past.  Though I was weakened with every cross I carried, you blessed me with your grace and gave me a renewed sense of energy to carry on.  But this time, the cross is too big for my small frame and its abrasive surfaces are piercing into my shoulder dragging me down with its heaviness.”  Jesus took child into his arms and rested her head on his chest and said, “This cross was made especially for you.  Only you alone can carry it.  I promise that you will not be alone, and when you tumble I will carry the cross for you….”

With the confidence that Jesus gave her, the young child left the Lord and went about her road of life.  Jesus helped her place the big wooden cross her shoulders; it was very evident that the cross was too big for her.  Oh how the heaviness of it weighed her down, at first weakening her knees and causing them to buckle.  Jesus helped her up.  Then gently, he placed the cross upon her narrow, soft, child frame shoulders once more.  Her face grimaced, showing her pain as the full weight of the wooden cross begin to bare its mass on her body.  But with all her might she steadied her legs from shaking, and slowly trudged along while hunched over on a dusty lone road.  The foot of the cross dragged behind her because it was much taller than she was.

Just then, a man and woman came up to Jesus.  They looked frantic and were in tears.  “Sir!” the woman asked as she tugged on the Lord’s robe.  “We’ve lost our child.  We haven’t seen her for days.  My husband and I have been looking for her every where, but no one has seen her, and neither have we.  Kind Sir, have you seen our little girl?  She is about four years old, her face precious and kind, strong in heart and spirit, but she’s still just a child … our baby as a matter of fact.  And we just want to find her.”  The couple held on to each other’s hand tightly as the Lord place his hand on the husband’s back as if to console him and said, “Do not worry.  Your little child is not lost.  There she is, just beyond that tree.  She is the one carrying that cross for me.”  And as the child’s parents saw this, they began to weep even more.  The woman fell to her knees and her husband bent down to hold her, “Lord,” they both pleaded, “let us carry the cross for you.  Our child is too young, she will not make it.  See, she’s already fallen and the cross is lying flat on top of her back.  Oh how her fragile body must be tattered and torn by the cross’s weight.”  But again Jesus said, “this cross was made just for her.  No one else may carry it except for her.  I’ve asked her to carry it for me, and she had the right to say no, but she accepted.  For she wishes to be a witness to the people of her generation of my love for mankind and my Father’s love for mankind.  And by emulating me in my life’s suffering on Earth, she has chosen to give testimony to my pain and my commitment to the human race that I will save them from damnation; for through the price of my crucifixion, man’s sins shall be erased from all records.  So come the day when my Father calls that you’d be on that list to come home.”

Then before Jesus could finish his words, a large crowd of thousands swarmed in around him.  They came from all directions and with their great numbers filled even the distance between the child and the Lord.  They begged him to heal them from their disease and release them from their disparity.  The crowd began to push and shove trying to get closer to Jesus so that may touch his cloak and be healed.  Voices from all angles shouted out, “Jesus, please have mercy on me for…I have wronged you…I have leospardsy …I am blind…I am deft….” Between the shoving and pushing of the crowd, the little girl was torn away from Jesus’ grip.  She began to get scared and cried out, “Jesus! Where are you?” and from far away you can hear another person’s voice shouting, “Young child, where are you?”

Eventually, the little girl grew tired of fighting the crowd and gave up.  A woman from the crowd came to her and said, “Why are you sad?  Go to him and he will heal you.  No sin is too great for him to forgive.  No matter is too hard for him to do for you.  Look at me, a woman with many sins, yet he has opened his arms to me.”  She kept repeating, “go on, go on…he is waiting for you” as she nudged the girl forward.  Soon everyone else was nudging her forward saying, “Go on little one…” And as the crowd cheered the little girl on, she could feel a strong presence of the Holy Spirit working inside her.  Then finally, there he was an image of a bright shinning light.  Jesus kneeled down to the girl’s level and said with open arms, “Come to me my child.  Your faith has forever healed you.  Your burden is my burden and your tears are mine to wipe.  The cross that you carry is a sacrifice you’ve made for all other sinners.  Offer the sacrifice and you’re suffering up to me, and I will help you carry cross to our Father most high.”

So to you now I say, “don’t be afraid to turn back to the Lord and say, ‘Lord, here I am humbled and with sorrow.  Give me your grace so that I may carry on….’” And in the background you’ll hear the crowd cheer you on “go to him…go to him”.  Close your eyes…can’t you hear them?  “Go to him, he is waiting for you.”

Through continuous prayer and persistence in requesting Christ to invoke in my mind meticulous awareness to help me to discover complete answers, profound insight that I may see Christ’s way of thought, and instinctive comprehension so that I may seek divine truths in the vastness of His teaching; it is through these, that I may strive to be an effective “life-instrument” for God so that his will may be done too on Earth. With my spiritual being so deeply immersed and committed in this offering to Christ for another, through the grace of God, I was able to connect into a clear channel with Christ where his every word spoken to me was without doubt.

Hence, though I realize that I am the one who is placing these words on the empty white pages, and that the subjects, thoughts, and feelings defined by them were conjured-up in my own conscious mind; still it does not feel like it was me behind the drawn curtains. So, believe me when I say that I don’t think the author of these inspirational hopes are 100% me.  My intellect is much more clumsy and slow than the One who is the true captain in this endeavor; he holds the plan and is navigating through the how’s, what’s, why’s, and when’s for each faithful message written.  In this instance, I merely play the lucky, yet humbled and joyous role of a “living instrument” to an author whose reference is too great to be uttered by my simple tongue.  He is the Holy Spirit, the Son of God, and God himself; each divine Being living within the other and thereby, a ONE GOD is who we have to adore.

As with most rewarding projects, I had my challenging days when various things these were a little harder than usual.  But for the life important reasons for why messages needed to be created in the first place, I persevered on most days, and if not, I tackled it twice as hard with the next attempt.  When I decided to create this offering for Christ, I promised God, friends, loved ones, and I that unless my illness prohibited me from writing every member on the “daily grace” email list, would receive a promised message of inspiration.  And if my state of health did cause me to miss a day, I promised as said above that you would receive the missed day’s message before the next day’s entry was due; and I’d have to be in pretty bad shape before I’d give up on a day’s commitment.  Successfully carrying out this project for Christ has to have my most honest ambition.  For if the sincerity is not 100% there, then my efforts with this idea have already failed before I even scribed down one word of hope on the blank paper.  Then our unified voice of one would become scattered and random hence, it is no longer a unified strong voice which can be heard from heaven’s high.

Though if all goes as planed, and everyone is doing their part, my hopes are that goodness will come out of this unified faithful effort.  The first sign of accomplished success in this project for Christ, for me would mean that somewhere on this blue planet which God gave us, there is a friend or two of mine, or it maybe even me, who on a usual day received a usual inspiring message but when we prayed brought forth in us a feeling of peaceful acceptance.  There is my accomplished success! For by the experience that one or all of us just had was a touch of Christ’s healing grace.

Completely accomplished success by my own judgment?  Yes, because:

• A friend(s) was touched by God’s needed healing grace
• A gained deeper understanding of the Good Word by reader(s) and writer
• A closer relationship(s) between a friend and Christ because a new knowledge of him and his word was received
• A friend’s(s) renewed thirst for Christ
• An act(s) of discipleship(s) was completed because a writer sought out the flock and spread the Words of Life
• A newly enrolled disciple because the reader past-on the Good News to a stranger, now the stranger is estranged no more
• A lost sheep is found because the life nourishing words and The Good Shepard has reached the lost and lonely
• A writer’s tested faith through tatters, tares, tears, tumble and dry well of energy are both renewed
• A group of friends faith too is renewed
• A multifaceted relieved healing or shared pain or relinquished suffering because of the domino-effect from one person’s offerings of individual pain, so that another’s may be altered
• A happy God resulting in a blessed people, a saved people
• … all other rewards that could not be thought of in this brainstorming session

And the great part is this list of positive outcomes only shows the desired results that the inspirational journal was created and kept for initially. These soul saving rewards were accomplished because a small group of people remained faithful to our Lord.  Now if that list were generated each time a message of grace is created and faithfully seen through the project’s processes, can you imagine how many people out there God’s grace can touch?  Wow!

Yes, these results and reasons were my inspiration for faithfully keeping this journal of daily graces.  I wanted to be the best friend that I could be to those I love, by praying for them.  I wanted to give glory to God by spreading his Words of Eternal Life so that people may see and share and experience him as we [Christians] do.  And if I could help lead someone to Christ, whether the person is someone who’s coming home or they are inspired new faithful, I would be so honored and would do what God said was needed for this exquisite event to occur.  But as much as I had taken on this project for Christ, loved ones, and strangers, I also did this for me.  For I was at a point in my young life where it seemed I lost all I could loose, and that includes everything that I endure from the first moments of citizenship on Earth until present life.

So in one moment with one realization of my reality, I made a choice.  With the help of an ineffable memory of the day I truly first met Jesus, the Son of God.  He was so real in his presence that day, that I can recall how it felt when I saw his face and held his hand in my walk that day with the Messiah.  Along with his image in my memory, I was also reminded of Jesus’ last words to me during our meeting he said, “Child.  Little one, leave all you have behind.  Take up your cross and come follow me and I will give you rest.”

And now here I stand at Scratch with an invitation to follow Jesus and that is where I am heading, because all other roads have leaded me to a dead end.  No human quick fix or denial of acceptance will make me righteous again.  Hence, my only hope of salvation is to find Jesus right now, so to forever from here I’ll always be walking near Jesus.  For from here I choose to do God’s will first and by that I know all else that I might need or want, will be given to me by the Lord; that which is not, I know God knew my needs best and in him I place my complete trust.