Living Daily in Reality No. 1

Living daily in reality – that's what we all want to do ! But what is reality ? Is it just what we face in our jobs – getting enough money to keep us working so that we can have children so that they can grow up like us to get jobs so that they can repeat the whole thing all over again until we all cease to exist ? Is this the sum-total of reality ? Or is there some real reality behind this world that we see around us ?

I will tell you the answer I've come to – but only if we can talk a little more together so that I have the chance to explain why I think this.

REALITY IS THAT YOU PERSONALLY HAVE A LOVING FATHER WHO CREATED THE UNIVERSE - HE MADE YOU INSIDE HIS ONLY SON SO THAT HE COULD LIVE A UNIQUE LIFE IN YOU HERE ON EARTH. That’s reality !

Why do I say that ? Because about 2,000 years ago there lived a man who was actually that son of the Creator of the universe. How do we know he lived on earth? The British Museum in London has the details of his life in two old manuscripts written just about 300 years after he lived in Palestine ! And there are over 4,000 other Greek manuscripts that have the same details – some of them are dated only 70 years after he died. But besides these, many of the people who knew him wrote and talked about him in their books and letters, and the actual garden in Jerusalem where he prayed his last prayers before he died still exists in the very place it was described almost 2000 years ago.

So – even though religious people have tried to turn this man into a mystical fairy-tale figure, the facts of his life and history are clearer and more certain than those of any other man of that time. Reality is that he existed with the Creator before the world was made - and that was when your existence was planned ! But now – remember I asked you to think with me a little longer so that you can see I’m not some kind of crazy fanatic – so - why do I say all this ?

First, because he himself – the Son of our Creator – actually lived here on earth in the first century of our era, i.e., he was born about 6 B.C. when the Roman emperor, Caesar Augustus, decreed that a census of the whole world should be taken. Quirinius was the governor of Syria, and a man called Joseph, who was the human father of this only son of our maker, had to go to the town, Bethlehem, where he had been born. These facts are all recorded in government records and accepted as history by dozens of contemporary writers, many of whom are not themselves religious people.

Fifty years later (when many people were still alive who had been in Bethlehem at that time) the account of this Joseph and his miraculous son was circulating in written form throughout the first century world. So the history of this unique human-being’s life is inextricably intertwined with the local and national political and public figures of the Mediterranean world of the first century. In the thousands of historical records not one questions that this man actually lived on the earth at that time.

Secondly, because the history of his actions and his words has been preserved so precisely one is compelled to respect and examine closely the authenticity of his explanation of reality. His death and return to life are attested and recorded by ordinary people and by scholars who died because of their eye-witness accounts. So the serious thinker has no option but to delve deeply into the words this person spoke about the Creator that he called Father.

If you and I were actually made as part of our Creator’s only Son, then our visit here on earth is only a small part of our real existence, and our whole life opens up into something far more spacious and limitless than we ever imagined. So, let’s think together about this again.