The title is a line from The Chosen, a TV series about Jesus and his disciples, that has taken me by surprise. Many portrayals of Jesus depict him as a solemn man who walked around preaching and talking to his nondescript bunch of disciples. You couldn't tell one from the other, only Jesus stood out from the rest of the characters and everything else was pretty standard story telling from the bible. But The Chosen is a world far away from the one we've usually seen or heard about Christ. For starters the disciples are wonderfully fleshed out; the impulsive and brash Simon, his dashing brother Andrew, the delightfully odd Mathew who has Asperger's Syndrome, the open minded Nicodemus who really wants to know more about what cannot be explained or understood. And Jesus, just one look at him and you can feel the warmth in his gentle eyes touching you. There's so much depth to the characters that now when anyone talks about Simon or Mathew, the actors who play them pop into mind. The makers of this show have created something that will stay with you long after you've done watching it. Everytime Jesus comes on screen, it feels like time stands still and only Jesus exists, you're filled with love so deep you don't know how you got so lucky to know him.
I've been stalking Jesus on Instagram, I mean Johnathan Roumi (who plays Jesus on The Chosen), until my sister got fed up and told me... you know he's not the real Jesus right. But that's the point, everyone ought to be like Christ... we all are here to become more and more like Him. This show by Dallas Jenkins only deepens this yearning we all have within us to know more, to seek more and Jesus shows us that this can only be done if we love more. This pure and perfect love is depicted so poignantly, almost searingly in the way Jesus interacts with the leper, the Samaritan woman, Nicodemus... each interaction leaves a powerful impact on the character as well as the discerned viewer. Like all these little poems I post on my Instagram account, nothing is ever the same after one experiences this kind of love, it makes all things new.
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