Reflections: Who is your hero?
Based on bible study lesson Taking Your Position in Christ, Week 1: Drop Zone
It’s 4:10am and I’ve decided to just get out of bed because I’ve been lying awake profoundly touched by the idea that Jesus is in so many of the people I know and my heart for all of humanity feels like it wants to explode out of my chest.
A hero is defined as a person who is admired or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements or noble qualities.
Our society has become OBSESSED with the idea of super heroes! Entire industries like Marvel and DC have been built around marketing characters like Super Man, Spider Man and Captain America. Children, teens and even adults all over the world have become CONSUMED with learning everything they can about these characters and the creators have built such inspiring backstories for these characters that people LOVE to love them!
We buy their plastic toy replicas, their bedsheets and curtains, lunch boxes and backpacks. We plaster our walls with their images and get into HEATED debates about which character has the best super powers and why.
What is it about superheroes that grabs and holds our attention so masterfully?
Who is your favorite superhero?
When it comes to fictitious superheroes, I’ve landed in these debates with people and I’ve had my own unique perspective. A young child once asked me, “Who is your favorite superhero?” Without hesitation I said, “PRINCESS POPPY!” to which this child vehemently replied, “Princess Poppy is NOT a SUPERHERO!”
I beg to differ. I admire her courage. She was courageous. She risked EVERYTHING facing the terrifying bergens to rescue her friends who had been captured. Not only did she “face” the bad guys, she befriended them. She had a noble character. She saw the good in everyone, grumpy old Branch and even the “enemy” who wanted to kill them, the bergens. She was selfless, kind, generous and joyful. Princess Poppy ABSOLUTELY is a superhero and if I had to name one, she’s got my vote.
I’ve been falling asleep listening to a book by Mother Teresa, a real life hero of mine, called “No Greater Love.” You can keep your Superman, Spider Man and your Marvel Book hero’s…you can even keep Princess Poppy, Joy from Inside Out and Pollyanna, my favorite movie character heroes.
My FAVORITE heroes are those who understand and exemplify the supernatural love of God.
Mother Teresa has held the hands of tens of thousands of dying poor people. She would clean maggots off of people who were dying in gutters, give them a bed, which often consisted of a mattress on the floor of a building in India, hold their hand, look into their eyes, offer a cup of water and share the love of God with them as they slipped away into eternity.
She LIVED and LOVED with the conviction that good or bad, what we do for people, we have done to Jesus. She looked at EVERY SINGLE life as the precious life of Jesus based on Matthew 25:34-45.
She was not concerned for her own wellbeing, provision or protection. She didn’t worry about catching what they had or how she would feed all these people. She just one by one saw people, brought them home and loved them as they died. She didn’t even fear death. She saw death as something beautiful, not something to be feared or hidden from.
She was simple. If she had clothes on her back and a roof over her head, she was content. She saw Jesus in the eyes of everyone she met. There were no good people or bad people. They were all Jesus to her and she LOVED them each as though they were.
She knew her place in life was to love those no one else saw or acknowledged. Her theology was different from mine. She prayed to Mother Mary which I don’t find any Biblical basis for, but she did everything for the love of Jesus.
She spoke extremely simply, so simply of the love of God that one could easily label her simple-minded or ignorant.
Praise God!
LORD, let me be found as profoundly simple-minded as Mother Teresa.
My daughter yesterday engaged me in a conversation where she was talking about evolution proposing that we have evolved from other species. I interrupted with, “I disagree. Scripture says that we were CREATED in the image of God. I do not agree with the concept of humans having evolved from other species.” She was offended at my ignorance. She asked me to PROVE it. She said, “science has PROVEN that we evolved from other species!” She even brought her friend into it when she came over later in the day… they were both struck by my ‘ignorance.”
“Mom,” she said, “this is the problem with religion. People close their minds to the FACTS that SCIENCE can PROVE…..” I interrupted, “people have found bones and made assumptions about where we have come from….none of us were there.”
The simple truth is that I don’t CARE if the world was created in six literal days or over millennia. I don’t care if there are other planets with life on them in the galaxy. I have no desire to solve the mysteries of the world, to PROVE things based on science or to SOUND intelligent to anyone. I KNOW that the world views Christianity as a narrow minded perspective on God, after all, how can ONE MAN who many people have never heard of be the ONLY way to walk in right relationship with God?
I have read the Bible several times in the past two years since God healed my mind of the “incurable, life-long, progressive mental illness” called bipolar. I’ve considered becoming educated enough to defend my faith, but why?
I want to reach into my closet, mindlessly choose one of my twelve Walmart dresses based on what color I feel like wearing for the day, throw on some leggings and shoes and head out into this hurting and desperate world to look into the eyes of my fellow man and LOVE them like Jesus.