Mal Fletcher looks at where our passion is directed

His passion for his people and his name were so great that even the greatest kings on earth - and the greatest gods of men - could not withstand him.

Jesus was certainly not bland or business-as-usual.

Novelist Dorothy Sayers has said: "The people who hanged Christ never... accused Him of being a bore - on the contrary; they thought Him too dynamic to be safe. It has been left for later generations to muffle up that shattering personality and surround Him with an atmosphere of tedium...'

'He was emphatically not a dull man in His human lifetime, and if He was God, there can be nothing dull about God either."

How is passion revived? It starts with me recognising a deep longing in my heart, a yearning that can never be filled with earthly happiness alone. Godly passion is stirred when I call to mind every day that this world is not my home.

As much as I enjoy God's rich bounty in a thousand ways every day, I can't afford to get my roots down too deep.

According to Jesus, it's when I feel most settled in and happy with this world that I'm most in danger of losing sight of real life.

That's when I lose my passion and settle for lukewarm spirituality.

Pascal wrote that we will never be happy "if we aspire to no other happiness than what can be enjoyed in this life."

God's passion energises our days when we hold only lightly to material things, to position, to status, to control. When we live for something that lives on when we die - for service, for friends, for faith.