Won’t You Look Down Upon Me, Jesus?

Won’t You Look Down Upon Me, Jesus?

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Today, at 6:00 pm, Christian millennialist believers were supposed to have been “raptured” – lifted up to heaven to live side-by-side with Jesus until he brings them back to earth to do final battle with the anti-Christ for the salvation of the planet and its (faithful) inhabitants. Needless to say, 6:00 has come and gone – no one made any spectacular departures.

But I know something about these beliefs.

The world is a hard and tough place to live. So much must be endured. It’s not at all surprising to me that there are those who look beyond human efforts, hoping for a powerful ally to intercede and save us. In Christian theology, the saved would be those who have accepted Jesus as their savior. How comforting for them to know that, if they’ll remain steadfast in their belief, something much better will come.

Comfort is something I think we all yearn to have.

Since the day Jonah died, I have explored – in the hope that I might find my son still alive in some “beyond death” kind of way – new ideas about the afterlife and even about resurrection, ideas not unfamiliar to me but, until March 5, 2009, I had no great need for any of them to actually be true. Two years after Jonah’s departure, my heart continues to endorse my exploration of anything that might bring my boy and me back together. Even the psychic medium, John Edward, appeals to that voice inside me that’s crying, “Please, help me find him.”

But while my brain says, “You don’t really know that any of this stuff isn’t true,” I was brought up as a skeptic and so I bite my tongue to stifle my snicker at the same time I do my exploring.

Just the same, the heart is a powerful motivator. These millennialist folks just want the world to get better. And I just want my boy back.

Neither of these is very likely to happen. But unlike the guy who sold his home for not very much money as he went off this morning to meet his maker, I’m not stocking up on Jonah’s favorite foods.

Nonetheless, that heart of mine doesn’t let me forget how much he liked Easy Mac.

Billy

BillyWon’t You Look Down Upon Me, Jesus?

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