In March 2002, a discovery of who Jesus really is, has changed my life completely and has brought tremendous hope in me. It was an awakening to something higher than my earthly thoughts. My life before this wake up call was mundane. A busy life but tiresome and wearisome. Routinely repetitive and headed to a very sad, empty and hopeless existence. Job was okay, some glimpses of limited happiness. But in all, there’s dissatisfaction in everything, brooding over an unseen future. I felt like everything had come to a dead end. People at work started to annoy me. I started to lose patience. To survive, I buried myself to the task at hand at work, but I dragged each day. I saw things done unfairly, but I would just bite my tongue. A lot of backbiting, it was so stressful that I had to do soundbites or brief catchy comments to my trusted friends just to let out the frustrations.
My sense of anger had built up in me, but there was no way out. I felt like I would always get the short end of the stick. I felt I’m surrounded with naughty “children” in need of a smack. The nastiness of the environment seemed to affect my private and personal life. I look forward for weekends and vacations hoping beyond hope that the ones concerned would get their act together. I started doubting that the sun in the east will shine. It was all a pipe dream. Haven’t we all wish a castle in the sky? I could not seem to escape and could not do anything rushed. All my life, I’ve had to play the hand I was dealt. I’ve learned to endure and used my own strength. But it was tiring.
One day as I looked out the window by my upstairs bathroom, I cried out to God, is this all there is in life? Is it always a rat race out there?! The September 11 tragedy made it more pronounced that there are people that always would cause havocs in people’s life. May it be at work, your personal life, and just about anywhere you go, most people hate people. I never knew as to why? What is wrong with the world?
One fateful Holy Week in March, 2002 was destined to give me answers I’ve never thought of, and that would open my eyes beyond what I could not comprehend in the natural life I was part of. It changed my outlook and attitude of sinfulness, selfishness, covetousness and self absorbed, self-centered ways.
It started on this one particular and significant day during this Holy Week, and a vacation week for me, when my hubby in passing said something about Jesus Christ that got my nerve rattled. I was perturbed and it brought me to search the internet about Jesus Christ that I had never done before, just because I did not have time for it. I was very far away from religion and was just so self-absorbed with all that was happening around me and was only focused on things that affected me.
On line, I was so surprised of what I found out and discovered. I encountered for the very first time verses in the Holy Bible and I could understand it and the Word is like a sword that went through my heart and opened it wide. Jesus was not on the cross, like I always would see in the church, that He is forever on the cross! He was teaching and walking with His followers. He was actually talking and sharing His first hand knowledge about God. He resurrected from death and lives! My heart was touched and I started crying. Right there and then, I felt like He came to the computer room and held me and said: “I have not abandoned you!”
I felt so overwhelmed and my whole body was trembling. The experience had given me a lot to think about. But I did not know where to start. I just spent the whole vacation week searching for Jesus that led to several links that explained that God, because of His love for us, sent His Son to this world to teach us and reveal to us who God really is. And God sent Jesus to give us salvation and an eternal life spent in heaven by dying on the cross for us. Before Jesus was born, God offered forgiveness of sins through sacrificial system only and through a rabbi and done in the Holy Temple only. No one can come to the Holy God, but only through His appointed prophets. These made people alienated, isolated or estranged from God and did not know Him at all and did not have any relationship with Him. Not because God did not want to, because He does, He always does. It’s our sins that separated us from Him. God so loved us that He planned for the longest time to give us a Savior that will ultimately save us from our sins and from ourselves and give us hope and a surety, that for those that believe and accept His Son Jesus as our Lord and Savior, repent and turn away from sins, will receive His forgiveness and salvation and an eternal life in Heaven with God and Jesus. This is God’s offer of mercy and Grace to mankind. Jesus alone, fulfilled God’s requirements in the olden times of forgiving sins, before Jesus came to the world. Jesus is the Light that led us to know who God really is. He is the Way to an eternal life in heaven and the Truth to God’s Plan of salvation, hope, peace and joy that only God can offer through Jesus Christ.
Not only did Jesus’s death and resurrection reconcile us with God, but He has given us the right to be called children of God and an intimate relationship with Jesus and God here on earth as well. Jesus’s followers are no longer condemned. 
They are no longer isolated, alienated and estranged from God. That is God’s Good News and amazing Grace He is offering to us all. What a great and faithful God we have!
Greatest GIFT - Naomi Jeremiah 