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The Story of Love Two thousand years ago this carpenter goes around telling everybody all they have to do to be happy and get into heaven is to love and accept one another. The "Kingdom of Heaven is at hand," he proclaims. Not distant, or far away. Nobody could believe it was that simple. The religious leaders taught that getting into heaven required obeying thousands of rules. The Ten Commandments were just the beginning of the rules everyone was expected to obey back then. They had entire volumes of rules. A lot of people were confused about what God was like. Many thought He kept some sort of cosmic scoreboard of everything you did right, and wrong. You had to constantly atone for your sins with animal sacrifices of one sort or another. There were all sorts of rituals you had to perform to stay "pure." The priests of the day taught that sinners got punished for being bad, and "good people" got rewarded for being good. Most people felt you had to somehow earn or deserve God's love by being good, by doing good works, and by going to church every Sabbath. Jesus told his followers that they should "Love one another, as I have loved you." Rather than coming to clarify all the "rules" Jesus said that he had come to "fullfil" the Biblical requirement to be righteous. All we humans had to do to have eternal life, he said, was to believe in Him.

God's power and love in Jesus grows and grows. Jesus miraculously heals both the spiritually and physically blind and dead. He feeds those hungry for the truth about God.

Jesus performs miracle after miracle. He walks on water, not to show off, but to convince the people closest to him that He truly was who He said he was: The Son of God.

"Fear not" he told his followers, knowing how love drives out fear. Love and fear cannot co-exist.

Jesus said, "Don't worry, for which of you can add a single inch to your height by worrying?" reaching into his pocket and whipping out his tape measure as if to prove it. The guy had a sense of humor!

In truth, Jesus was described as a man of sorrows. How hard it must have been for Jesus to see so many people who wanted to believe, but couldn't. Even his closest disciples struggled to believe who He really was -- God come to earth in human form.

Jesus demonstrated he was not just the Big Kahuna of spiritual issues, but of physical things as well. He performed healings, raised Lazarus from the grave, he commanded the wind and waves. He told a disciple to go catch a fish which would have a 4-drachma coin in its mouth with which to pay their temple tax. Jesus attempted to show us we could trust him with EVERY part of our lives: Spiritual, physical, financial, everything.

Well, you know how the story goes. The misguided religious leaders of the day nail Jesus to a tree for telling everybody their image of God was mixed up, for performing miracles on a Sunday, which was against the rules, but mostly, for confessing that "Yes, he was indeed the Son of God!"

Jesus died on the cross in agony. To make sure he was dead a Roman guard stabbed him in the chest before they hauled his body down, put it in a cave and rolled a big rock in front of it.

Three days later Jesus comes back to life, holes in his wrists, ankles, side and all. He encourages his friends and followers to believe, telling them not to fear but to trust in him, telling us that he is with us always.

Always.

Over the next two thousand years, with the very best of intentions, Jesus' followers and believers create an entirely new religion out of worshipping this construction worker, his death and ressurection, the cross he was nailed to, and so forth. Most people completely forget about his numbah one message: To love and accept one another.

The "Royal Commandment," the only NEW commandment Jesus is recorded as having ever made, is for us to love one another, "As I have loved you."

This material is NOT copyrighted. Feel free to email it, repost it, plagarize it, whatEVER. Send it to your best friends. Rewrite it. Make it better. Just do it out of love. Wade Nelson Durango Colorado.