Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? – Luke 15:4

Only someone who has a deep love or obsession for that sheep will, don’t you think? Well that was what God did- for us!

I was window shopping at a mall the other day and in a book sale, I saw this book by Paolo Coelho, a best selling author. The book was aptly titled, “The Zahir.”

“The Zahir” is a novel about love and obsession. The concept of the zahir was taken from Arabic tradition.

In Arabic, this word literally means visible, manifest or evident. In Muslim communities, the masses use the word for “beings or things which have the terrible power to be unforgettable, and whose image eventually drives people mad.”

In Coelho’s usage, the zahir is something or someone who (or which) when we experience (encounter or meet depending on whether it is a who or a which) cannot be erased from our system. The zahir becomes the reason we live. He (or it) becomes the center of our universe.

It was said that the first witness of a zahir was a Persian by the name of Luft Ali Azur.  In his encyclopedic work entitled “Temple of Fire,” Ali Azur relates that in a certain school in Shiraz there was a copper astrolabe “constructed in such a way that any man that looked upon it but once could think of nothing else.” It was a zahir.

In 1832, a man named Meadows Taylor was said to have recounted an account when on the outskirts of Bhuj, another place in Persia (now called Iran), he has heard the expression “verily he has looked upon the tiger.”  He was told that the reference was to a magic tiger that was the perdition of all who saw it, even from a great distance, for never afterward could a person stop thinking about it.”

Such is how deep love and obsession work. It consumes you. It makes you think of nothing else or no one else. It was like that deep love that God felt for us. He leaves heaven and all its glory and splendor (his ninety-nine?)to find us- the lost sheep in his pasture.

So as you may have realized by now, this blog isn’t about the Coelho novel. It is about finding the best and the greatest zahir there is in the multiverse (assuming the latest assertions about the existence of multiple and alternate universes is correct).

This greatest (and best) zahir I am talking about is a person. It is suppose to be a person. And his name is Jesus.

The Bible declares Jesus to be the Son of the living God (Matthew 16: 16) who was given by the Father as a gift for fallen humanity (John 3: 16). He is the demonstration of God’s love for sinners (Romans 5: 8).

The “Good Book” even says that “in him we move and live and have our being” (Acts 17: 28). Therefore, If we are to have a zahir in our life (and we should), that zahir has to be Jesus.

While all other obsessions are fatal, obsession with Jesus is healthy and will produce a better life for the obsessed.

Jesus’ own words in the gospel of John says, “I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly.”

That life according to theologians is the “zoe” life. It is life in the realm of the spirit- a life that transcends even life in the flesh which we (and scientists) often call the “bios” life.

Obsession with this bios life creates all kinds of hedonistic leanings in us and we become victims of the lust of the eyes, of the lust of the flesh and of the pride of life. History is laden with concrete examples of this.

If there is a license in the Bible for obsession, it is obsession for Jesus. The language of Jesus, himself, about this is somewhat heavy.

In Matthew 10:37, Jesus Said; “He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”

Later in verse 39, he further said, “he who has found his life will lose it; he who loses his life for my sake will find it.”

You see, abundant life begins or ends by choosing or not choosing Jesus as the zahir of our life. The rich young ruler lost his, shall we lose ours too?

Last Sunday, a member’s son asked me if I was watching “May Bukas Pa,” a local TV series aired on ABS- CBN. He asked me if the premise of the show is true- that “Bro,” the endearing term used by the seven year old protagonist to refer to Jesus, really exists and talks to kind young boys. I said yes, and explained that he won’t only talk to Santino, the miracle working child in the series, but to all other children if they will just pray.  Then he quipped, “it was not Jesus who talks to Santino, it was Big Brother!”

I just stood there dumbfounded with my mouth open.

The child’s doubt about Jesus made me realize the adult version of his question: Is there a God?

The world wonders if indeed a supreme being, the uncaused cause of everything there is exists. If he does, how may he be found and where?

It was a basic question that was hard to answer.

Consider this words from Jose P. Rizal, the Philippines’ foremost national hero:

We are entirely in accord in admitting the existence of God.

How can I doubt his when I am convinced of mine. Who so recognizes the effect recognizes the cause. To doubt God is to doubt one’s own conscience, and in consequence, it would be to doubt everything; and then what is life for?

Now then, my faith in God, if the result of a ratiocination may be called faith, is blind, blind in the sense of knowing nothing. I neither believe nor disbelieve the qualities which many attribute to him; before theologians’ and philosophers’ definitions and lucubrations of this ineffable and inscrutable being I find myself smiling.

Faced with the conviction of seeing myself confronting the supreme Problem, which confused voices seek to explain to me, I cannot but reply: ‘It could be; but the God that I foreknow is far more grand, far more good: Plus Supra!…

I believe in (revelation); but not in revelation or revelations which each religion or religions claim to possess. Examining them impartially, comparing them and scrutinizing them, one cannot avoid discerning the human ‘fingernail’ and the stamp of the time in which they were written…

No, let us not make God in our image, poor inhabitants that we are of a distant planet lost in infinite space. However, brilliant and sublime our intelligence may be, it is scarcely more than a small spark which shines and in an instant is extinguished, and it alone can give us no idea of that blaze, that conflagration, that ocean of light.

I believe in revelation, but in that living revelation which surrounds us on every side, in that voice, mighty, eternal, unceasing, incorruptible, clear, distinct, universal as is the being from whom it proceeds, in that revelation which speaks to us and penetrates us from the moment we are born until we die.

What books can better reveal to us the goodness of God, his love, his providence, his eternity, his glory, his wisdom? ‘The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork.”

Beautiful words from a beautiful mind. It helped clarify my own ideas about the existence of God.

I believe in God. I believe He created me and everything else in this world. I believe what the Bible says that only fools say there is no God.

When I was young, I believe that there is a God because my parents said so. As I grow older, my reasons became more than just that. Now I believe in God for deeper of resons.

I believe that there is a God because there was once a void in my heart that was filled when I believed. Money wasn’t able to fill that void. Education failed to fill that void. No person that came across my way was able to fill that void except God. Blaise Pascal may be right in saying, “there is a God- shaped vacuum inside every man’s heart that can only be filled by God Himself.”

I believe in God because when I look at creation I see complexity and beauty. Such complexity and beauty could not have come from accident. It could have only come from an intelligent designer who made them all in their vast array.

I believe that God exists because everything I see are all real and if they are there must be someone who made them real. Nothing comes from nothing. Nothing can come into existence unless someone brings it into existence so there must be a God that transcends time who created them all.

Lastly, I believe that there is a God because the Bible says there is. The Hindus believe that the existence of God cannot be inferred from mere sense perception (pratyaksa) or from mere logic (anumana). Rather, the existence of God can be understood from the revealed scriptures (sabda). We Christians believe this too. We can never know God unless He will choose to reveal Himself. We have that revelation in the Bible which is God’s timeless Word.

I have a problem though. How would I explain all these these to that member’s son on Sunday? (Deep sigh). Kids…kids…kids.

This statement is the starting point for anyone who wishes to touch the world through prayer. We have been taught many wonderful truths about prayer in our churches, cell groups, Bible Schools and seminaries yet our people still don’t pray; our people still find it hard to mumble even a simple thank you to God simply because we have started on the wrong foot. We have chosen to start our prayer journey on grandiose statements about what prayer can do rather than on a desire to say, “Lord, teach us to pray.” We often tell people that God answers prayer or all things are possible through prayer.

The result is what we see on our churches today: prayer on pursed lips, empty pews during prayer meetings and believers who feel drowsy on a simple mention of the word prayer. Believers are dazzled more by what we say prayer can do- heal the sick, raise the dead, move mountains and so on than by what it will actually bring them eternally.

Enthusiasm, though, doesn’t equal real power. Prayer has both temporal and eternal results. Healing, resurrection and answers to problems like financial provisions and divine interventions in seemingly difficult situations are temporary results of prayer. The more lasting results are spiritual strength, an overcoming life and a strong faith among others. The sad thing is that we get more excited to see miracles wrought by prayer than to witness lives transformed by it.

People in the world today want to know how to pray because they thought it would produce whatever it is they need. They have become a generation of Harry Potters with cheap prayers for spells to cast magical results. In effect, Hindus and Buddhists go to their prayer gurus and were taught to say mantras to their gods. Christians too unknowingly join the bandwagon. They buy books from their own prayer gurus who publish how to’s in praying effectively.

These ways-to-pray-effectively type books give me the chills because they tend to focus on the more temporal results of prayer. They teach us that our prayers are only effective when they get the desired results of healing, dead people resurrected and other various miracles.

It seems that believers today are sanitized by cheap prayers. Prayers that focus only on temporary results are cheap. We ought to pray more like Jesus than most of the faith and prayer gurus that we have in the church today.

Sad to say, believers read the prayer manuals of these prayer gurus more than they read the Bible. They never realized that in it, the prayer manual from the greatest prayer warrior of all is right within their grasp.

This disciple which I mentioned earlier had more sense. He came to the right person and said, “Lord, teach us to pray.”

Who would be a better prayer mentor than He who would hear and answer our prayers? If we want to know how to pray, let us begin by coming to Him who answers and hears our prayers and say, “Lord, teach us to pray.”

Two things stand out in this one liner from Luke 11: 1. First, the unnamed disciple’s request shows that a believer’s desire to pray should not be forced. It should be voluntary and should emanate from a heart that truly desires to grow in the faith. Second, this disciple’s request is an admission of a universal need. His request is not just for himself but for others with him. His request is reflective of our need too. People from all generations need to realize that we should be taught by the greatest teacher, Himself, how to pray.