History Comes to Life

I love history. A lot. It's one of my not so well kept secrets. I couldn't care less about the dates and the specific battles or even the treaties. The thing that endears history to me the most is the people. The personalities and the unqiue traits of each and every person who has influenced the course of history from the beginning of all of it to now. History is not the written words on a page. It is the sum of millions of lives that aren't alive anymore.

I went to see "Night at the Museum" with my mom and sister. It was a fantastic movie. Every night, there is a power that brings everything in the museum to life. That is history for me. Not dusty old statues, but people who made choices. Sometimes they were bad and sometimes they were good. It's very easy for us to look back and judge them. Can we judge them though? How would we have reacted differently in their situations? We don't live and breath what they did. They may have had cleaner air than we did, they certainly did actually, but with that clean air came a new set of challeneges and problems that we cannot comprehend. We see the past in a very sterile way, in a way that we cannot view the world in which we live. It wasn't though. It was as full as disease, heartbreak, politics and war as the world we continue to live in. We cannot think that the past is something so clean that it can no longer touch us. Perhaps in this world, it is the only thing that can.

There is also the perception that history is static. It has now been written and it will never change. That is an interesting perception because history is constantly being re-written. Fifty years ago we claimed that Columbus "discovered" America. Now we say he invaded it. Every few years there is a new way to view history. There is the view of different ethnicities, and different genders. There is the view of the conquerers and the conquered. In all the perceptions that have shifted over the years, not one important figure has truly escaped it. There is one figure that continues to shift in our quest to more fully understand him. It is the quest to find Jesus Christ.

There has never been an attempt to deny his existence in the world, or the fact that he died on a cross, crucified by Roman soldier. He was there. He did exist. Past that, there are the gospels and the many translations that have come to be in existence. Out of these, from believers and skeptics, there have come a plethora of interpretations. Jesus, the Jew. Jesus, the gay man. Jesus, the healer. Jesus, the married man. Jesus, the rebel. Jesus, the simple carpenter from Galilee. Jesus, the original feminist. Jesus, the traveler. Most recently I have heard the idea that Jesus did not come from a poor family, but rather a wealthy family who held a high position in society. I find it interesting while there are so many interpretations that cloud our vision, the one we are most likely to disbelief is that idea of Jesus as divine. That he may have truly been the Son of God sent as our Messiah. I wonder how we are so comfortable forcing him into our own mold of what he must have been like that we are so able to ignore what he was like. We miss what is right infront of our eyes and continue to search for what we desire to find. For Jesus Christ is one of the few historical figures who is not dead but continues to live and breath and work in the hearts and minds of many who seek to change the world and make it a better place.

If you wish to see history come to life, you don't have to look any farther. He is there. Waiting for you. You simply need to give Him a place to live.