Friday, December 15, 2006

The Willingness of Desire

A person of strong desire is a person willing to pay the price to fulfil or achieve the desire. He is driven in his pursuit and faces obstacles with resolve and grit to move ahead. He stops at nothing. He is captured by it. How wonderful it is when man desires for things above. In a parable by Jesus, he is like a man who finds a treasure of great price hidden in a field and joyfully sells all he has to buy up the whole field (Matt.13:44). He finds it, he desires it, he sells all to buy it and he does it willingly and cheerfully. It had a high price tag but it was happily paid for.

At this Christmas season, let us be reminded that the Magi travelled about 1000km on camel back over rugged terrain looking for the promised Messiah after seeing the Star. They recognized the significance of this momentous event and they sacrificed an enormous amount of time to seek till they find. They were thoroughly prepared. They travelled with lavish gifts to worship the Messiah, though it was very dangerous to do so because of the many bandits preying on travellers. But it was unthinkable to them to appear before the King of the Jews without gifts worthy of His greatness. After receiving knowledge from Herod in Jerusalem that the Messiah was prophesied to be born in Bethlehem, they hurried there and found Jesus the Christ.

Interesting to note however was that Herod and the religious leaders who informed Herod of the birth place of Jesus and the citizens of Jerusalem did not make any effort to seek for Jesus in Bethlehem which was just merely 10 km away.
Herod rebuilt the temple of Solomon yet sought to kill the One who is to worshipped.
The religious leaders knew the scriptures but it did not set aflame their hearts to pursue the Lord but rather opposed His ministry and later succesfully conspired to kill the Messiah promised in the Holy Scriptures.
For the citizens of Jerusalem, they probably did not want to associate with the Gentile Magi in collective worship or they feared the ruthless cruel King Herod of what he might do to them or perhaps they reckoned they cant derive any benefit yet from a baby. All three groups were so near to the Divine Child but they had no desire and therefore made no effort to seek Him.

As we remember and celebrate the birth of Jesus the Christ, let us strongly desire to seek Him, worship Him and share Him to others. It requires a Christian to purposefully and diligently pursue God. It requires him to struggle through every distraction and keep focus on Jesus. He will devalue worldly things and revalue spiritual things onto a higher scale. Give Jesus your gift of a committed heart. Be A God Chaser.