About Christianity

among all the heroes in the story world, which one is your favorite? there are many of them. from the english comics we have spiderman, batman etc. from the japanese manga we have ichigo (bleach), narumi ayumu (spiral) etc. almost every story have their own heroes.

but of all the stories i read, i could only come up with 3 characters that i can say i think fits the description of a hero. they are not people who save the world, nor are they people who change the world. maybe i should start describing a bit more.

my favorite hero character for now (since i don't know what kind of characters will appear in the other stories i read in the future) is Toufuuin Saizou (getbackers). most of you would not know about this character.

this is one of the most tragic character in the story. anyway, this man, in order to save his best friend and his circle of very close friends, became a traitor and worked for the man who exterminated his clan. living away from his friends, without his family beside him, submitting to the person he hates and also being labelled as a traitor by the very people he tried to protect. the very person he wanted to protect ended up wanting to kill him. as he is a tragic character, he died, of course. the other 2 similar to his fate i guess would be uchiha itachi (naruto) protecting his brother and der kaiser (getbackers) protecting his wife and son.

this is all a story. but these are stories that made me think the depth of love people can actually have for others. it is not a normal hero character like kurosaki ichigo going around risking his life for the sake of saving a friend. it is not allen walker going around going against the most evil force to save the souls of demons. risking one's own life, or going through a lot of trouble for a friend, yes it is love for a friend. i don't deny that. i might not be able to do that.

i assume most of us have a best friend, or people whom we love, be it our family or our close circle of friends. how far would you go for them? risking your life? i thought many of us would. as you might already have known, what are the common characteristics my 3 heroes have that the others don't have?

the 3 of them had went through more than just simply risking their lives to save/protect the people they loved. it is one thing to risk your life for those whom you love, it is another to give up your life (although all 3 of them died in the end), get hated by the one whom you love and all the while still keep on trying to use your life for the very ones who try to kill you.

of course, this is all fiction. but i know of one real person like that. let's talk about it later.

so, if we say we love a person, if we say this girl/boy is my best friend, then how far are we willing to go to protect them? you know, we can say we don't mind risking our lives. but when the time comes, do we really feel that way? i have no idea. i cannot say things about what i have not experienced. afterall, talking is different from doing, as in talking is easier. how about being hated by the one whom you love? are you willing to go that far, suffer that much?

i am not saying we all need to go through that. this is just something i thought up of. because humans don't really say what they mean sometimes. i love you. but that love, is it just on the surface level? a little deeper? or is it so deep you want to protect it even if you have to go against the whole world? i don't know if you ever have this feeling (let's not talk about whether it is practical or mature or not, that is a debate by itself) - i don't mind if the whole world is against me because you are by my side. the love of one person outweighs the love the rest of the world can give. i guess it must be really painful to be misunderstood by that one person whose love is more important than the world right?

are we able to do that? or is someone willing to do that for us? i thought, and i thought. i don't think i am noble enough to even achieve that. stories are afterall too idealistic sometimes. there are just some authors who aimed to write a story to make people cry. (i am hoping to be like one of them, writing a good enough story to make people cry. hey, with this method, the more people cry, the more praises i get!)

have you noticed? yes, it is the Lord Jesus who did that for us. coming down from Heaven, to be a human when He can sit and enjoy life. He is one who came to save us, yet hated and killed by the very people He wanted to save. i don't know if He died with a smile on his face like the 3 heroes (i don't think He did), but the fact was He did not give up. it was not a one day affair. throughout the months and years, people don't like Him, yet He did not give up. up to the point where He was crucified and died, He asked for their forgiveness.

can you do that? no i am not asking you to do that. but one look at this 'job description' and i know i cannot. it is like saying, i am trying to protect you and save you, and you hate me and want to kill me?

sometimes i thought how life would be if it is idealistic like stories. and maybe, we do have some idealistic events in our lives. afterall, our life is somehow a story by itself. and we have a hero, like the other 3, who would go through anything to save us, no matter our reactions.

so, the 3 are my fictional heroes. and i have a real Hero in my life, though i admit i don't usually treat Him like one. i am not proud of it though. now, being up to you, would you want to accept this Hero into your life, knowing he loved you enough to die for you, knowing that the whole world against Him did not make His love for you decrease by one percentage point?

who is your hero? and who will your hero be?

according to an article i read, it said that the number of friends one can have is limited. that is because to maintain a friendship one need to put in time and effort. and there is only so much time and effort we can spare for friends. fair enough.

today, i talked to my friend whom i did not talk to for a long long time. i never met her. years ago, i just got this request from msn that she wanted to add me to her list. as it turned out, she did not request to add me in the first place. but then, we decided to be friends. seemed like we decided to make use of that error in the system to make a new friend.

of course we had talked, not often, but enough to maintain a relationship. then after one day of a normal conversation, we stopped talking to each other. still i had not met her yet, even though we live pretty near to each other. yes very near, maybe an hour's travel. and we didn't know how each other look like. both of us don't have the habit of putting our photos up online. yea, for some reason we just stopped talking. we did not quarrel, and there were no arguements. perhaps we were just waiting for each other to talk to us. she did clear her msn list, and so i did to my own list as well. i don't know why, but she kept me in her list, and i kept her in mine.

today, i decided to talk to her. i had wanted to do so for a few months now, but didn't really had the chance. it was a pretty pleasant conversation. she remembered what our last conversation was about. you might know what your friend said to you the last time you all talk. but to me, that was amazing. because, thinking back, we had not talked for....6 years. yes. we had never met, never really improved our friendship to a very close level, but she remembered our last conversation 6 years ago.

of course, i was happy. she not only remembered me, she remembered what we talked about. and for me, i did remember what we talk about too. the memory God gave us is such a wonderful thing isn't it? i cannot remember all the formulas i need to remember for my exams, but i can remember things like this. stuffs like this may not help me pass my exams, but to me, they are more important than the formulas and the theories.

i told her i will talk to her again soon, because she had to go off after around 2 hours or so. i told her, this time, it will not be 6 years. she too, agreed that. i don't know how you feel after reading this. but for me, my mood have been pretty good because of this. i had found back a friend. and i hope that our friendship will be better. we might never meet, we might never know how each other look like. but does that matter? to you it might, but to me it does not. friendship is not based on appearances, it is based on how much both of us are willing to put in the effort. it is based on trust. i have no idea how much closer we will get, but i hope it will be much better than now. perhaps after dropping from friends to aquantainces, we might become friends once again. it had been 6 years. she told me time is rather unforgiving. how true.

moral of the story? i had 'gained' back another friend. what about you? do you have hurts from previous friends? or did you simply stopped talking to them? if you have, if someone pop up in your mind, don't hesitate to drop them a message. call them. patch up with them. renew your friendship. friendship is an amazing thing. don't delay it. who knows? tomorrow she may not be there anymore. tomorrow you might not be around anymore. no, i am not cursing you. but don't let a moment of laziness make you regret the rest of your life. i am lucky. i got her back after 6 years. what about you? will you gain your friend back?