An ordinary man

According to prophet Isaiah, Jesus was a man who had no beauty nor majesty that we should desire him or look at him. Jesus was simply one of many faces in first century Palestine. He was a carpenter which is the equivalent to our modern day computer analyst. When he was thirty he was unmarried, poor and unknown.  Jesus was simply an ordinary man.

Now imagine that you were Jesus, and you knew that you was the Son of God who created everything seen and unseen. I’m sure that you would want to be anything else but ordinary - you would want to be a pop like sensation, everybody knowing who you are and desiring to live in fancy places and enjoy to the fullest the world which you made. Being a computer analyst would not do, having no beauty would insult you, limiting your majesty would frustrate you.

I’m sure as a man that you would want to be like a Van dam or Jack baur, a superhero, a top politician who is known for his rhetoric and charisma. You would take nothing from nobody.  No one would dare to slap or insult you because you would throw them into prison, you would lord your authority over them; if someone spits in your face, you would defend your honour and when accusations are made against you, you would simply reveal their lies because you are able to do so.

But Jesus was an ordinary man. He would not fit today’s definition of masculinity, Hollywood would dismiss him, politicians would reject his philosophy, the religious would criticize him, and the world would shun him. It seems that when Jesus lived he did not live to please men or the world, he simply lived to please his Father, which freed him from meeting the demands to conform to the ways of man and of the world.

I think we need to think again and not be quick to dismiss the ordinary. When Jesus was twenty-two, I’m sure that he wasn’t worrying about his fame or his name being known, he didn’t care about what people was thinking of him and whether they had a good opinion of him; he wasn’t striving for worldly standard or attention but I’m sure he submitted and entrusted everything to his Father.

This ordinary man in time became the man who transformed the whole world because he simply did His Father’s will. According to worldly standard, Jesus was just ordinary, a peasant, an unknown carpenter from an obscure village, poor and reasonably educated. He was lacking in beauty and majesty and yet His character, words and deeds have changed the entire course of human history.

If you think your life is ordinary, rejoice, if you think you have no beauty, rejoice and entrust everything to God your Father and seek to imitate Jesus. Follow his example, his yoke is easy and you may not gain worldly reputation but you are gaining something far better which is the kingdom of God.

K.Oni