Jesus the Son of Man (Illustrated Edition). Kahlil Gibran
daughter of the lord of the vineyard and led her to his mother's house; and of the prince who met the beggar maiden and bore her to his realm and crowned her with the crown of his fathers.
And it seemed as if He were listening to yet other songs also, which I could not hear.
At sundown the father of my bridegroom came to the mother of Jesus and whispered saying, "We have no more wine for our guests. And the day is not yet over."
And Jesus heard the whispering, and He said, "The cup bearer knows that there is still more wine."
And so it was indeed -- and as long as the guests remained there was fine wine for all who would drink.
Presently Jesus began to speak with us. He spoke of the wonders of earth and heaven; of sky flowers that bloom when night is upon the earth, and of earth flowers that blossom when the day hides the stars.
And He told us stories and parables, and His voice enchanted us so that we gazed upon Him as if seeing visions, and we forgot the cup and the plate.
And as I listened to Him it seemed as if I were in a land distant and unknown.
After a while one of the guests said to the father of my bridegroom, "You have kept the best wine till the end of the feast. Other hosts do not so."
And all believed that Jesus had wrought a miracle, that they should have more wine and better at the end of the wedding-feast than at the beginning.
I too thought that Jesus had poured the wine, but I was not astonished; for in His voice I had already listened to miracles.
And afterwards indeed, His voice remained close to my heart, even until I had been delivered of my first-born child.
And now even to this day in our village and in the villages near by, the word of our guest is still remembered. And they say, "The spirit of Jesus of Nazareth is the best and the oldest wine."
A Persian Philosopher In Damascus: Of Ancient Gods And New
I cannot tell the fate of this man, nor can I say what shall befall His disciples.
A seed hidden in the heart of an apple is an orchard invisible. Yet should that seed fall upon a rock, it will come to naught.
But this I say: The ancient God of Israel is harsh and relentless. Israel should have another God; one who is gentle and forgiving, who would look down upon them with pity; one who would descend with the rays of the sun and walk on the path of their limitations, rather than sit for ever in the judgment seat to weigh their faults and measure their wrong-doings.
Israel should bring forth a God whose heart is not a jealous heart, and whose memory of their shortcomings is brief; one who would not avenge Himself upon them even to the third and the fourth generation.
Man here in Syria is like man in all lands. He would look into the mirror of his own understanding and therein find his deity. He would fashion the gods after his own likeness, and worship that which reflects his own image.
In truth man prays to his deeper longing, that it may rise and fulfil the sum of his desires.
There is no depth beyond the soul of man, and the soul is the deep that calls unto itself; for there is no other voice to speak and there are no other ears to hear.
Even we in Persia would see our faces in the disc of the sun and our bodies dancing in the fire that we kindle upon the altars.
Now the God of Jesus, whom He called Father, would not be a stranger unto the people of Jesus, and He would fulfil their desires.
The gods of Egypt have cast off their burden of stones and fled to the Nubian desert, to be free among those who are still free from knowing.
The gods of Greece and Rome are vanishing into their own sunset. They were too much like men to live in the ecstasy of men. The groves in which their magic was born have been cut down by the axes of the Athenians and the Alexandrians.
And in this land also the high places are made low by the lawyers of Beirut and the young hermits of Antioch.
Only the old women and the weary men seek the temples of their forefathers; only the exhausted at the end of the road seek its beginning.
But this man Jesus, this Nazarene, He has spoken of a God too vast to be unlike the soul of any man, too knowing to punish, too loving to remember the sins of His creatures. And this God of the Nazarene shall pass over the threshold of the children of the earth, and He shall sit at their hearth, and He shall be a blessing within their walls and a light upon their path.
But my God is the God of Zoroaster, the God who is the sun in the sky and fire upon the earth and light in the bosom of man. And I am content. I need no other God.
David One Of His Followers: Jesus The Practical
I did not know the meaning of His discourses or His parables until He was no longer among us. Nay, I did not understand until His words took living forms before my eyes and fashioned themselves into bodies that walk in the procession of my own day.
Let me tell you this: On a night as I sat in my house pondering, and remembering His words and His deeds that I might inscribe them in a book, three thieves entered my house. And though I knew they came to rob me of my goods, I was too mindful of what I was doing to meet them with the sword, or even to say, "What do you here?"
But I continued writing my remembrances of the Master.
And when the thieves had gone then I remembered His saying, "He who would take your cloak, let him take your other cloak also."
And I understood.
As I sat recording His words no man could have stopped me even were he to have carried away all my possessions.
For though I would guard my possessions and also my person, I know there lies the greater treasure.
Luke: On Hypocrites
Jesus despised and scorned the hypocrites, and His wrath was like a tempest that scourged them. His voice was thunder in their ears and He cowed them.
In their fear of Him they sought His death; and like moles in the dark earth they worked to undermine His footsteps. But He fell not into their snares.
He laughed at them, for well He knew that the spirit shall not be mocked, nor shall it be taken in the pitfall.
He held a mirror in His hand and therein He saw the sluggard and the limping and those who stagger and fall by the roadside on the way to the summit.
And He pitied them all. He would even have raised them to His stature and He would have carried their burden. Nay, He would have bid their weakness lean on His strength.
He did not utterly condemn the liar or the thief or the murderer, but He did utterly condemn the hypocrite whose face is masked and whose hand is gloved.
Often I have pondered on the heart that shelters all who come from the wasteland to its sanctuary, yet against the hypocrite is closed and sealed.
On a day as we rested with Him in the Garden of Pomegranates, I said to Him, "Master, you forgive and console the sinner and all the weak and the infirm save only the hypocrite alone."
And He said, "You have chosen your words well when you called the sinners weak and infirm. I do forgive them their weakness of body and their infirmity