Day 6 ( Passion)

The people who I find most attractive are people who are passionate about something.  People who have a twinkle in their eye when they are talking about or doing their' thing'.  There is something fascinating about a person with a passion.   Just think about someone like Brian Cox - a particle physicist ( or something) who has become a telly heartthrob by talking complex science.  But he talks it with passion and energy which is irresistible.   Noel Fitzpatrick - the Supervet - who is not by any traditional standards ' attractive' but who is so utterly adorable just because he dedicates his life to saving animals and inventing new treatments with an almost pathological obsession.  Bear Grylls who has a passion for eating bugs and surviving in deserts.

One of my sons ( who would kill me if I identified which one he is in this blog!! 😛) has a schoolteacher he absolutely adores. The teacher is a young man who clearly teaches his subject with so much humour and enthusiasm and energy that it is rubbing off on his students.  My son talks about him constantly - and not just about the subject he teaches but about the jokes he tells, the clothes he wears -  what a ' legend' he is.   I am delighted to see that one person's passion for his work is awaking a passion in my son for the subject he teaches.  You can't buy that stuff.  You can't manufacture it.   It is priceless.

And what has all this got to do with Advent I hear you cry?

Well.........  ummmm, Im not sure really.   Except that today, for the first time in a very long time, I had a conversation with a very good friend and found myself telling her that what she really needed was to be born again.  To have a fresh start.  To check out this God stuff cos it really truly does work.  And she said to me ' you know I look at people like you and I would really like to believe but I just dont know how'.     And I remember thinking that about Christians I knew when I was a teenager before I got saved.   I could see something in them I didnt have.   A passion perhaps, for a person I didn't know.   People find that fascinating.  Attractive in some mysterious way.  Compelling,

And thats because it is Jesus in us.  Jesus, the most passionate person who ever walked the planet.   Jesus who had a twinkle in His eye and a fantastic sense of humour , who was ruthless in His mission yet utterly vulnerable in its execution.   Jesus who was totally sold out on God the Father and who didnt care who knew it.  His passion was so attractive that He drew people from every strata of society and class and creed to leave everything to follow Him.    I want to be like that.

I think God has made us all with the ability to be passionate about stuff.  The trick is to firstly find that thing which makes us sing with joy and then to do it for Jesus with every fibre of our being.  That is our true worship.  Round pegs in square holes arent usually happy pegs.  And unhappy pegs dont usually attract other pegs to follow them  😊