Perceptions #37

"DID JESUS EVER GET THE HICCUPS?"

by Gary Cleveland

"Daddy, did Jesus ever get the Hiccups?" the little girl asked. "I don't know," chuckled her father. "I never thought about it." Those second graders think up the craziest questions...but somehow she had gotten through to his own inquisitiveness. "I wonder if he ever did get the hiccups?" he thought; "Oh what a waste of time thinking of such. What does it matter if he did or didn't?" And so the father and his daughter forgot all about the silly question - or was it so silly?

Perhaps our biggest mistake in grasping for a hold on the true character of Jesus is our inability to picture him as human as well as divine. Artists have long portrayed him as having a constant look of piety and a halo glowing overhead, but that really sells the man short. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to picture Jesus as being human enough to get the hiccups. It might help us to identify with some of those intense moments in the garden when he uttered, "Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done."

We might do well to follow after Zacchaeus who climbed a tree to get a better look at Jesus. Have you been looking at him through the crowds too long?

Gary's e-mail address is: gcleveland@pobox.com

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