Fully human, fully God

I can't believe it's August 16 and the summer is nearly over! My blog entries are far between, yet still I will do my best to keep up.

Anyway, I like to try to spend a short period of my quiet Sunday mornings pondering faith. Even if I don't participate in an organized religious activity, I usually like to try to at least think a little about the larger picture and how people around the world are doing the same.
Something that I came upon this morning was the description of Christ as "fully human, fully God". For some reason, though I've heard this all before, it struck me today to actually ponder this idea... and, I was blown away by the implications of this statement. In essence, it is a profoundly simple idea that Christ wished for all humankind. He wanted each person to be, as he had faith that he/she could be, fully human, and fully God. Whether one believes that Jesus was the Son of God or not, as a human, he seemed to have only the best intentions for people; to achieve greatness in themselves (in service to God, that is), and do it to the best of their ability while inspiring others to do the same. That's a pretty darn good intention, and however simple, it seems to have been one of the most elusive and difficult challenges to plague mankind for eternity. In fact, many religions and institutions of faith have become so OCD about how to achieve this goal that I think they've completely lost sight of the real reason for Christ's imploring wish. Perhaps "getting to heaven" isn't exactly the judgment at the gates I always imagined. Faiths other than Christianity have a different view of so-called "heaven", and I find that fascinating too. For example, the Buddhists achieve levels of enlightenment through meditation and prayer, a less outward and gregarious display of faith from Christianity, nevertheless, their goal is the same, essentially to become the ultimate; "fully human, fully God", or in their case, "fully enlightened".

Well, that's my faith pondering today. Just praying to make it through another week, and prayers for my cousin who is early in her pregnancy. She has been through so much, and we want so badly for this little miracle kid to make it!! Keep hanging in there miracle baby! I know you will be beautiful.