The WAY of Jesus, as I have shared with you before, is a way of personal change and transformation. It is accomplished by our actions to activate the potential we have been given by our God to grow in His likeness. His likeness, as we all know, is seen in the Person of Jesus, Who is God Incarnate.

So the WAY involves us cooperating with God’s Spirit within us to choose to change the way that we think and behave. Our thinking, of course, always crystallizes into our attitudes – the way that we look at God, life, others and even religion. If our attitude about God is that He is a punishing deity and unconcerned about us, then we will act in a way that reflects this attitude. If we feel that others can’t be trusted and are only desirous of taking advantage of us, then we will act in accord with this belief. If religion is only a series of rules and regulations, then we will not find the peace and joy which religion is meant to bring to us. If life is always bittersweet, then we will never really find peace.

Our thinking controls everything that we do. Unfortunately our thinking is also controlled by unconscious thoughts and ideas which we may have developed during childhood. Our thinking controls the way that we look at our world and our lives. If we think of this world as a hostile place, we will never find the beauty that exists in creation.

Given all of this, God came in the Person of Jesus to help us see that this earthly life is given to us in order to help us find the meaning and purpose of our lives and also see the love that He has for us. Remember that we pray in our Divine Liturgy that God’s love for man is beyond expression. God unconditionally loves us as only God can. We recall that even in Genesis it says that God created all things, even man, and found them good.

Now I realize that the experiences of life can make people bitter. I see it every day. Again this is due to their thinking. When people categorize life experiences as either bad or good, then I am sure that they will be disappointed since they probably experience more bad experiences than good. Why do I say this? Because humans tend to categorize any experiences which don’t meet their fantasies about life as bad. I hear so very often people say: Life isn’t fair! Of course they say this because life doesn’t always turn out the way that they want. Is life suppose to be fair by our personal definition? If it is, then I would suggest we would not grow and never come to understand the meaning of life.