Why I Want To Meet Jesus?

The following story is written by Alicia Rizzo. Alicia is a 13 year old 8th grade student that Pastor Marco has been doing bible studies with. The whole team was inspired and moved by Alicia's keen understanding of the principles of freedom and her incredible ability to formulate thoughts in simple - yet powerful - ways. Truly, The Gospel was never meant to be complicated and Alicia who attends a public school and was raised Catholic wrote this as an English assignment.

Why I Want To Meet Jesus by Alicia Rizzo

If I could meet anyone, I would want to meet Jesus.

I want to know for myself who Jesus really is. So many people have the wrong image of our Creator; some believe Him to be a treacherous God of thunder and lightning who is coming back to serve justice by punishing us for our sins. Others see Him purely as a God of love, but they can’t understand why in the ‘end of the world’, He is coming back to kill and conquer. They just say that “God will kill when it is time-but only because He is a God of justice, so He has to do it.”

These kinds of ‘Christians’ have corrupted the name of God so badly that thousands of people now live in fear of him. They reject words like ‘church’ or ‘religion’ out of scorn or terror of the image ‘Christians’ have given them of Him. But the truth is they’re smart to have rejected Jesus. Who wants to listen to somebody portrayed as a hypocrite? Yeah, He loves you so much that He was brutally murdered for you, but if you don’t obey Him or repent, WATCH OUT! He’ll barbeque you in Hell! Who could truly love and obey a God like that?

Say that your mom calls you up one day and asks how you are, do you need anything? After a normal conversation, your mom casually informs you that you have a sister you never knew about. You say that you don’t want to meet her, and your mom is horrified. She expects you to love her and embrace her as your sister and friend. What would you say? “Mom! How can I love someone I don’t know?”

To know, by definition, is to recognize, to perceive, and to understand completely. So how do so many people say that they grasp the concept of our God when they don’t really know Him at all? I want to know my Savior. But how can we do this without a path to understanding? How can we approach someone who seems so unapproachable? Jesus came to earth and became our bridge.

Many still don’t perceive how this is possible and lose track right here. But as proof of how Jesus unlocked a door by coming to us, just look around you, right now. What do human beings today see as the end? Death. When you die, it’s over. Some are even afraid of that fact. So what would happen if our Creator, the Control Panel of everything, came to earth, as a human, and was able to overcome the terminal of all human life? His own followers, His own best friends; they doubted that they would ever see Him again after they witnessed His death! If Jesus had been a God up there on the cross, there would have been no real significance if He conquered death. It would have been like, yeah, that’s nice that He conquered death, but He’s God, what do you expect? But a human overcoming death, that was unheard of, in reality.

If you still doubt my reasoning, look back to the example of you suddenly discovering you had a sister. If I would have said, ‘pretend you were an Atheist and you suddenly found you had a God,” the point might not have been so clear to you. But by using something that you could relate to, you understood more efficiently. Jesus knows that for us to have greater or fuller understanding, He needs to show and teach us things in ways that we can relate to.

One more reason I want to meet Jesus is so that I could witness not the miracles, but the reactions of those around Him. The Pharisees, His friends and followers and those who are being healed. I want to see the joy in a leper’s face when he sees that he is clean; the hesitation of a cripple that melts away into amazement as he starts leaping and running and jumping. But most of all, I want to look into the face of Jesus. I want to feel the love pouring out of his eyes, and have the feeling of being welcomed home to Him. It would be so comfortable to know that no matter how far I separate from him, I will always be free to run back into open arms.