Becoming Jesus

These days in Switzerland I don’t read newspapers at the morning hours. So after the busy and tiresome hours at the university when I walk back through the railway station I begin my newspaper reading with ‘Blick am Abend’ and end up in the regular dailies. My colleagues tell me that it needs to be the other way around. But on 17^th of October when I took the Blick in my hands the main news struck me. It was tragic news of a Swiss family losing its father at the shores of Mediterranean see at Tuscany. He saw his three kids drowning in the rough waters and he jumped inside and fought the rising waves to save his three kids and at last he breathed his last due to exhaustion. Very tragic. Here I remember the word ‘vicarious’ which is used to attribute the vicarious atonement of Jesus. The word has its root in latin word vicarius or vicis meaning substitute, change, alternate, surrogate or representative. Often the act of Jesus dying for many is attributed to as a vicarious act of atonement.  If Jesus is the savior of the world, this father of the family who breathed his last saving his three children, is the Jesus of that family. In reality it is a big loss to the family, but his name would be written in eternity for turning his life to be a savior to his three children. I remember writing in an article nine years before, that my only prayer in my life is to become a ‘Jesus’ or a saving inspiration at least to one. I still wait for that moment in my life.