A few years ago, the hubbers and I celebrated our tenth anniversary with a trip to Sri Lanka. The package included a stay at a hotel on the beach, two buffet meals at the in-house restaurant, and a car with a driver who doubled as our tour guide for the duration of our stay there (I know, so fancy. It was a special-occasion splurge.)

Turns out, our driver took his job as tour guide super seriously and would stop the car every mile or so to point to a bird or shrub or a temple by the side of the road. I would take obligatory pictures of the object he enthused over and we would move on.

I remember being particularly fascinated by what he called an “umbrella leaf” plant. The leaves of this plant were gigantic — longer than my husband’s arm, which is saying something as the man has, what I call, “built-in selfie-stick arms” (incredibly convenient for taking group photos, I should add). But coming back to the plant — evidently, during the monsoons in Sri Lanka, passers-by hack off a leaf and use it as a makeshift umbrella to shield themselves from sudden downpours.

Suitably wowed by the plant, I took a bunch of pictures of it and said touristy things like, “That’s amazing,” and “So cool,” and similar cerebrally stimulating phrases.

We came back home to India, and to my surprise, there it was: the same “exotic” foliage of Sri Lanka cheerily stared back at me on home turf. The “amazing” umbrella leaf plant grew wild right outside my parents’ home. I had never paid any attention to it earlier. I didn’t recognize its worth or consider it a thing of beauty before.

When Jesus came into the world, His own did not recognize Him (John 1:10). Like that umbrella plant on home ground, He was not valued. The Jews were expecting someone more “impressive,” perhaps. Someone who made a red-carpet entrance to rescue them from Roman rule rather than the repression of sin.

While it’s easy to point a finger at them and think, “What? You didn’t recognize the Savior despite all He said and did?” — isn’t that what we do today?

I know I don’t always recognize Christ’s beauty and sufficiency in my life.

We don’t think our pressing problem is the disease of sin. So we tend not to believe that Jesus is the answer. We expect a different solution.

We find our own fixes instead of fixing our eyes on Jesus.

We buy into the enemy’s lies that our satisfaction can come only from the “next thing,” whether that’s getting married, or having kids, or a promotion at work, or a sizeable bank balance, or an impressive Instagram following. But while those are possibly good things, they are not the ultimate thing. We fall prey to the idea that true fulfillment has to be more complicated than the simple truth that Jesus loves us and came to set us free. The familiar truth does not seem to be fascinating enough for us.

The question is this: What will it take for us to recognize the enoughness of Jesus?

I needed to leave the shores of India and go to a whole new country to recognize how incredibly cool an umbrella plant was!

We don’t need to go anywhere to recognize the beauty of Jesus. In fact, He left heaven and came to us on earth to be Immanuel, God with us. But do we discount His always-open invitation because we’ve become all too familiar with His always-there presence?

May our familiarity with God’s presence not rob us of being enthralled and captivated by Him. May we recognize that He is the All-Sufficient One.

May we not find our own fixes but instead fix our eyes on Jesus as our fulfillment and freedom.

 

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Photo by Mitchel Lensink on Unsplash