THE LEDGE ONLINE
Feeling Lost? Look Up!
Impacted by circumstances. Overwhelmed by all the failures; what should have been and what eventuated. Maybe a lot of the responsibility is on your shoulders but it is also true that others share in the responsibility. But when you stop and look up and see that blue sky, feel the warmth of the sun and realize that you can stand tall and not be bowed down. When you look up you find the pressure of looking down is broken, your world expands with promise and hope. There is a saying - "Look Up and Live!" The heavens hold the key. Now we are not speaking of the blue azure or rain filled grey cloud or that special sky that brings the intricate flakes of snow. We all have been born with a central craving to please and become acquainted with the Almighty Power that holds it all in His hands.
Let me share a true story with you ~
Lew Wallace, governor of New Mexico, was writing a book against Jesus Christ.
It followed a conversation he had. "I had always been an agnostic and denied Christianity," Wallace said. "Robert C. Ingersoll, a famous agnostic, was one of my most intimate friends. He once said, `See here, Wallace, you are a learned man and a thinker. Why don't you gather material and write a book to prove the falsity concerning Jesus Christ, that no such man has ever lived, much less the author of the teachings found in the New Testament? Such a book would make you famous.
It would be a masterpiece and a way of putting an end to the foolishness about the so-called Christ."
Wallace went home and told his wife about the project. She was a member of the Methodist Church and did not like the idea. But Wallace began to collect material from libraries all over the world that covered the period in which Jesus Christ should have lived. He did that for several years and then
began writing. He was four chapters into the book, he says, when it became clear to him that Jesus Christ was just as real a personality as Socrates, Plato, or Caesar. "The conviction became a certainty. I knew that Jesus Christ had lived because of the facts connected with the period in which he lived." So he asked himself candidly, "If he was a real person, was he not then also the Son of God and the Savior of the world?"
Gradually Wallace realized that since Jesus Christ was a real person, he probably was the one he claimed to be.
"I fell on my knees to pray for the first time in my life, and I asked God to reveal himself to me, forgive my sins, and help me to become a follower of Christ.
Toward morning the light broke into my soul. I went into my bedroom, woke my wife, and told her that I had received Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. "'Lew,' she said, `I have prayed for this ever since you told me of your purpose to write this book, that you would find him while you wrote it!"'
Wallace went on to write a famous book. Every time I watch the epic film Ben Hur, based on that book, I wonder at how it was written by a man who wanted to disprove that Jesus ever existed and instead became convinced that he was the greatest man who ever lived. Yes, they both looked up and found prayer works. They found direction to Life eternal.