There are Worse Ways to Get Superpowers

A few months back I took an Eharmony.com personality test. The matches it gave me were a joke, but the test itself was pretty insightful. One thing it insisted upon was that I am an artistic soul. I have always wanted to be an artistic soul, so I was pretty pleased to find that I already am one. Being artistic of course requires a lot of you, so I did some research, and here I am, filling my niche nicely. I woke up from my nap today, put on some torn up sandals, 2 bracelets, one hemp, one from an activist group, put on my favorite jeans with the left leg held together by safety pins, and headed off to a coffee shop. Not a Starbucks, but a locally owned coffee shop where I can better fight the man.

I rather like being artistic, because on my way in, 2 girls waved at me. I think that they could tell I was an artist, and from what I understand, girls eventually grow out of the athelete-liking-phase and grow into an artist-liking-phase. It's good to know I'll get to be some girl's phase soon.

I've been reading the Gospels a lot lately, both because I want to know Jesus better and because I'm in a class right now on the first three gospels. I recently got the chance to read through one of my favorite bible stories, and I noticed a few things about it.

We all know the story, and if we don't, we need to read it. It's in Matthew 14, and it tells the story of Jesus walking on the water. Now this is really neat, I always love reading about Jesus' superpowers, because I like the idea of Jesus as this superhero in disguise. So Jesus walks on the water, and Peter being Peter decides to get gutsy, and he asks Jesus to call him out. I like to imagine that Jesus loved this, and that he was thrilled to call Peter out, although I suppose it's possible that he was totally emotionless like I used to imagine him when I was younger.

So Peter does the obvious thing and gets out of the boat to walk on the water. But when the waves get pretty intense, he looks away from Jesus, and boom, starts to sink. So Jesus of course pulls him out, but what I kind of want to focus on is just the simple fact that Peter got great power by just looking at Jesus. I love this aspect of the story, that he gets his power from focusing on Jesus.

I suppose I write this because I feel like in the world around me we have looked away from Jesus. All of you at York, you know what I'm talking about. Don't get me wrong, I love York College, and that's why I say this to hold us all accountable: Whether it was coaches, administration, presidents, teachers, students, whoever, at some point we made the mistake of putting our faith in something other than Christ. To be blunt, I feel like we put our faith in the financial power of athletics, and I find it rather ironic that the result was us losing at a lot of sports. Don't hate atheletes, just calling it like I see it.

So where's this going? Well to be honest, it's simply an acknowledgement. As previously stated a few months ago on this page, I feel like a problem becomes a crisis when it's ignored, so here I go pointing out what we all know but don't want to say. Things are on their way back to healthy, but it'll take a concious effort from us the students to make sure that the higher-ups carry through on it.

The moral of the story is simply this: We may have sunk a little last year, but just like with Peter, Jesus is overjoyed to reach out and pull us out of the water. The catch? We're going to have to shift our focus back on him. As atheletes, as students, as people, it's our responsibility to look to Christ, whether you're a freshman or a senior, a trustee or the president, look to Christ, and see what kind of superpowers he gives you.

(jake)