"The Jesus I Never Knew"

Traditional bookmarks. Conventional inserts.  Do your children make them?  Carefully draw them, and with your help, laminate the priceless gifts? They are presents for their book- wormy mommy. Bookmarks. They can never be a-thing-in-the-past.  At least, not in my domain of home-teaching kingdomette.  I hope to keep that passion for reading real pages and pages of words in published paperbacks and hardbounds. And pages of letters written by conventional, old-fashioned letter-writers.

Whatever you call them in this day and age of ebook technology, books that you collectively stand in your not-only-three-book cases, and read them voraciously, depending on the mood—are they, your books, still a living, growing favorite in your family?

Here's another bookmarked piece of interest. My desperately thinking brain has been in it since my mind laid eyes on it—for the last three weeks. Yeah, it’s new in my hand. But the concept and facts are as old as more than five millennia of writings. Writings and history of a people through ages. It’s about the Creator of the universe who chose to become like this people. Whose own humanity rooted from the unpopular- next- to-nothing  town of Natzeret in Galil (Galilee).  That turned the world upside down.  It’s insane, as the unbelieving critic puts it.

Cute little bookmarks my children gave me leafed-in through the pages and chapters. The 2,000 years of history covered up in this book is both exhilarating and disturbing. But I still drink its portraits of the Saviour like water, since I learned about Philip Yancey's, "The Jesus I Never Knew". I thought I knew Him!

It's not a friendly book though. The book was neither intended to flatter anyone, nor lift itself up above the Holy Writ.  It's a tough-skin read. But I’ve risked it. If you are the kind that asks too many questions, and is prepared to accept hard facts-- but facts gentle to digest and absorb--then, this book is for you to read and accept the challenge. Here, you encounter facts that many of us do not pay attention to-- Facts only the Biblical writers and historians put careful, fearful study and record.  Bless them!  

I’m neither a Biblical writer, nor a wannabe historian, far from it. If you are the kind that just cannot simply afford to brush off issues that may add to your treasury of wisdom and knowledge of the Son of the living God, then this book, “The Jesus I Never Knew” is worth reading and bookmarking. It’s a gentle book. You'd want to "touch every stone and turn them over" to check it out for yourself. As you do that, you'd not be disappointed in what you'd find out. You'll come out of your "comfort zone" with the sense of freedom for finding out the truth yourself.

Count yourself challenged.  Why?  This book is void of the fluffy stuff. My old beloved biases, blinders, critical blandishment of knew-it-all were lovingly taken away since I’ve seriously studied the Scriptures in its plainest meaning : What God really meant from His heart.  I’ve seen the Saviour anew and fresh as how God laid out His words to be understood!  This book, is like one of the tools I value and add in to my toolbox for building.

Read it like a little child. And you’ll attempt to take a few more baby steps, drawing and delighting nearer to the heart of the Father in heaven. 

Just as the rain water comes down in drops and forms rivers,

so with the Scriptures: one studies a bit today

and some more tomorrow, until in time the understanding

 becomes like a flowing stream.—Song of Songs Midrash Rabbah 2:8

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