Even to the most devoted Christian, Christ Jesus' three years of public ministry may often seem like little more than a sweet dream in the night—quickly and sadly gone. In fact, most of the people who lived in the world at the time he was here didn't know him. If we were to circle on a world map where he traveled and did his wonderful healing works, the mark would be a dot on a vast planet. Within that dot, only a relative handful would have experienced his healing treatment. And in Jesus' own home community, ignorance closed many minds to his actual significance.
Thought of solely in this limited way the impact of Jesus' life is almost inconceivable. No radio or television or newspaper spread word of his message. Considered in material terms, this world-changing event would appear to shrink smaller and smaller as time passes, distance separates, and ignorance intervenes.
Similarly, changes in viewpoints and technology would also seem to shrink the significance of all of us, as well as the world in which we live. In the modern era, tremendous telescopes have extended our perspective so greatly that humanity and planet Earth can appear to be little more than an invisible point in a universe that reaches beyond the imagination. Perhaps these and other changes, which seem to make the world so different and unstable, explain why feelings of insignificance are so much a part of our lives.
