In previous blogs I’ve discussed the development of my series main characters. In each case Rebekah, Johanna, Miriam, and Mary underwent a metamorphosis. While Mary’s was somewhat different from the other women because her experience with Jesus was daily from the time he was born, she learned from being with him and observing him with Joseph and those they encountered. My other characters were touched in more subtle ways and in briefer contacts.

Each woman was portrayed in life circumstances that left her feeling powerless and out of control. She wanted answers. She wanted certainty. She wanted relief from the agony of the present.

In their encounters with Jesus he not only spoke to them but he also listened to them. He felt what they felt, and they came away from those encounters feeling healed – physically, mentally, and spiritually. They felt full of life and powerful enough to live it.

To feel powerless is to feel victimized. We all feel victimized when we feel as if we have no choice, and all of my main characters start with this feeling. Instead of being “at cause” in their circumstances, they all felt “at effect” in them: that their actions were determined by the environemnts in which they lived.

In this sense they are like all of us today: products of the winds and whims that produce us and bring us hence. Very few of us seize our lives as products of our own making. It is easier, and it involves far less responsibility, if we can blame our plights on circumstances of others’ making.

One of the most crucial – and under-appreciated – of Jesus’ messages was that we are all responsible for our own beliefs and for our own experiences of life. We may not be responsible for what life hands us, but we are all responsible for what we do with it.

In my opinion Jesus didn’t promise a trouble-free life if we followed him and his path. What he did promise was that following his path would make this life worthwhile, and that in following his path our spirits would live forever.